The mom manual

The Mom Manual


As a mother, I know we are often seen as the nagging, annoying type. Moms do an awful lot of whining and it makes it sometimes very hard to live with us. This is why I am offering you this manual. It's not a complete manual, just a bunch of helpful hints, kind of like a quick reference guide. At the very least, it will help you deal with some of our issues in a way that will produce less nagging, making your life a lot easier. And ours :) Enjoy!

- There are two basic steps to the process of operating a door. The first, opening it and stepping through it, you seem to have mastered to perfection. Excellent. There is however a second step: close the door behind you. Work on it, especially if the door leads to an unheated area like the hallway. Not only does it help save energy because the cold won't get into the heated room next to it. It also prevents cold drag which we hate, with a vengeance. Save the planet, start with mom's cold feet.

- Contrary to popular belief, we do NOT enjoy scavenger hunts to retrieve all the cups, glasses, cutlery and porcelain scattered throughout the house. We growl whenever we open our kitchen cabinets only to find half of the things there are missing, we growl even more if those things aren't even in the kitchen at all. If you use it, take it back to the kitchen so it can get washed and used again.

-Taking a clean glass or mug for every drink may be common practise in bars and restaurants, but it's not around the home. It is perfectly aceptable and in fact encouraged that you use the same glass for both soda's you pour yourself. On the other hand using the same mug or glass for days in a row isn't acceptable either. As a general rule of thumb, make sure it gets washed at least once a day.

- We have this wonderful item known as a hamper. It's where the dirty laundry goes. It is in fact the only place dirty laundry should go. Dropping dirty clothes where you took them off, or placing them in a pile over a chair so you can put them in the hamper at some point in the future, is not acceptable. If you want it washed, put it where it should be. If it's not there, don't be surprised if it doesn't get washed and you run out of clean undies.

- If you want pets, don't try and convince us of the fact it really won't cause us any extra work. We are mom, we know it will. Sure, during the first few weeks you will feed it, groom it and walk it if it needs that. After that, you go back to being your lazy self and it's us ending up taking care of it. Don't insult our intelligence and professional expertise by stating it is otherwise.

- Don't ever tell your friends that we do not work as long as we are within hearing distance. It angers us. We may not get paid for what we do, but fact of the matter is we are fulfilling a life long volunteer job here, with no vacation, no bonuses, no sick leave, and no chance at retiring or quitting. Yet we are required to display sufficient to expert skills in a myriad of areas. Cleaning lady, cook, procurement manager, financial wizard, tutor, walking encyclopedia, psychologist are only a few of the many positions we fill in this household.

Keep these things in mind and you may find we are actually quite easy to get along with.

Music and images

Two things I love are singing and photography. if you are brave enough to want to experience the combination.. here's a link to my uploaded videos on Youtube.

Enjoy.. hopefully

On Love and Fear

Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about a concept I encountered in multiple places. The theory, that every single decision or action we take boils down to being motivated by one of two possibilities: Love, and Fear. Where obviously everything done out of Love is right, and everything based on Fear, is the wrong choice. And I have started to apply this principle to my life, my responses, and the decisions I take.

The second concept I am integrating into my life is known as the 90/10 principle. The theory here is that 10% of our life experience consists of things we have no influence on. They just happen to us. The other 90% is how we respond to those circumstances, which actually makes a huge difference in how we perceive our own life and our levels of stress, or preferably lack thereof.

Combine them, and what you get is a fairly simple rule of thumb to live by. Accept the 10% I have no influence on. And let my actions and responses be solely motivated by Love, making the rest of my life as joyful and stress free as possible. Simple, huh?

Well not quite. Apparently the Power I serve likes to toss me one curved ball after the next, taking the driller sargeant approach in training me. With our financial resources fully depleted and thousands of Euro's left to pay in last years taxes, as well as wanting to get the divorce procedure started and finalized so both of us can go our own way, finding a job is my #1 priority at the moment. I have applied to every single job offer that I even remotely fitted the criteria for, but being 45, not having worked for 8 years.. the job market isn't exactly welcoming me with open arms. Add to that that I can't work fulltime because my kids still heavily depend on my being home at least most of the time they are here and it gets even tougher. And so I was happy I was accepted for a job, working at a callcenter and solving technical issues for a satellite TV provider. It's a low level job, doesn't pay very well, and it is way below my capacities but hey, it's a job. But they did require me to study a thick syllabus then follow a 2 weeks fulltime training before I could start there. And so over the past week I studied the syllabus really well, learning all I could about Megahertzes, transponders, uplinks and azimuths.

This training started today. And I'm not in it. Because over the weekend, my daughter became very ill. When I saw her yesterday, with a high fever, white face with black circles around her eyes, and her throat hurting so badly she could barely swallow, I knew I couldn't leave her home alone all day to go to my training. She needed a doctor, and me to stay with her and take care of her. Ron is not here, he is visiting his girlfriend in Portugal and won't be back until this evening.

I really had no choice. I had to let Love and my responsibilities as a parent prevail over Fear of money problems. And all I could do was accept, call off the training and ask the company to please schedule me for next month's training since I really do want to work there, and phone the doctor first thing in the morning. And I did. With grace, and trying to keep smiling and enjoy the positive sides of it.

I really am trying my very best here. But sometimes I really wonder why the Powers that Be feel such a strong need to keep doing these things to me. I can only hope it is because They have other plans with me that will solve the problems at hand in a different way. And yes, that is a Fear based response. I never said I was perfect, just that I am trying..