Friday, July 31, 2009

Riding in cars

Its no great secret that I have a bunch of kids nor is the fact that I have basically raised them by myself. I won't reach to hard to pat myself on the back because it has taken a whole lot to do what I have done, friends and family have played integral roles in my kids lives and allowed them to have the best of all worlds.

When I was nineteen, pregnant and alone my mother insisted that I couldn't accomplish anything with a baby on my hip; a year later she was horrified when I became pregnant again; devasted wasn't even about to cover it the third year in a row of pregnancy. I managed though and got some serious birth control that seemed to actually work, that is for about 4 years before it too failed and I once again found myself pregnant. After that I just had my tubes tied and was done.

I know it probably seems weird mentioning all of this with the title of the blog but for me, it was the safest place in the world to talk about such important things with my mother. We were never really that close and she always seemed to view me as quite a failure in life, I assume its because her and I are so different.

Anyway, as my kids grew conversations; important ones anyway; seemed to always happen in the car. I knew from my past that I liked not having to be stared down when discussing sensitive subjects such as a failing grade, sex, feelings, emotions and dreams. Somewhere in my psyche I just felt better about it not being so confrontational and made it a habit with my own kids.

The first big one occured when my son was around 13 years old, I thought it was time to discuss sex with him. Imagine my surprise when he let it slip that "every time I have had sex I have used a condom mom" I was shocked to say the least.

Since then we have talked about everything under the sun including underwear issues, sex, friends, grades, school, news, the war, work, love, death and of course the occasional fart. This may sound foolish but it works!

I remember commercials a few years ago that suggested trying to have conversations with teens while in the car and those commercials always made me smile because I was already doing it. I think the reason they work is because time is limited between stops, you can't stare down your teen and this leads to a higher comfort level for them. Now when my kids want to talk they ask me to take them to the store for something trivial, the trip is about 15 minutes one way.

If all the worlds problems could be solved by taking a 15 minute ride to the store, imagine how the world would be....

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Starting over

About 5 years ago I got bit by the blogging bug thanks in part to my kids making me a myspace account. I blogged almost daily about my life and the things that went on around me. My blogs ranged from funny happenings with pets and kids to the devastion of my marriage and the abuse that I endured. I also blogged about my childhood, my medical condition, stupid things people do and the list goes on.

I have been making a transition away from myspace for sometime now, I have all but stopped blogging because of some very anti-social folks that would twist my words and attempt to cause problems in my real life.

It seems that the only thing I use myspace for anymore is to read a few favorite blogs and that is it, so it only seemed natural that when one of those came to blogger officially that I would follow as I am sure the other bloggers on myspace will undoubtedly do, it just makes sense to have my own account and with a little hope I can re-enter the blogging world with my own spin on child rearing, stupid people, my life, my disease process and in an attempt to educate those who don't understand maybe shine a bit of light upon the unknown inner workings of a life that could have already ended.

Welcome to my life and my new home for blogging. Thanks Stephanie for giving me that final push to get off that pot! lol