Hourglasses, Sticks, Pears, and Beachballs: Stop Categorizing Women!!

I just finished skimming through an article that talked about Robyn Lawley's recent brave act of posting a picture of herself in a bikini, airbrush and makeup free, and how she has made the leap from straight size to plus size modeling.  She's a size 12.  She's considered a "plus size".  You can read the full article here:  https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/marie-claire/fashion/news/a/24526623/robyn-lawley-shares-unretouched-bikini-photo/  I applaud this, simply because if one woman does it, then others may follow.

It brought to mind a bit of unpleasantness from my own tween years.  I was always a curvy girl. Like a lot of tween girls, I had that extra baby fat that just wouldn't go away, and so when mom took me shopping for clothes I had to wear a "6x" instead of a "6".  I remember feeling ashamed and knowing that there was something wrong with me, because I wasn't "skinny".

Now that I'm forty, I understand that what drives the market and the public's opinion of the female persona is sheer insanity.  Taking a look at Robyn Lawley, I can tell you that a size 12 body on a 6 ft 2 inch model isn't going to look the same as on a 5 ft 6 inch average woman.  This is where the fashion industry needs to change.  We need to get over the expectation that women look like a set of Stepford wives and embrace the differences that all women have:  short, tall, skinny, fat, big hips, big boobs, no ass, no boobs...these traits are not what make a woman.  We need to stop being so obsessed with putting women in categories, just because it's ridiculous.  Have you ever heard a man complain about being "pear-shaped"?  Have you ever looked at a man and thought, he's fat because he doesn't have a thigh gap?  It's gone beyond ridiculous.

It also brings to mind the silly little memes I see on Pinterest every now and then. Memes that proclaim:  Real Women Have Curves.  Excuse me, but every woman I have ever met is real.  They lived and breathed, had children and big, gigantic hearts.  Being curvy is not a pre-requisite for being "real".  Neither is displaying a full set of ribs.

It is my ardent wish that women everywhere would just love themselves.  Become obsessed with being healthy. Become obsessed with who you are.  Inside.  Become obsessed with making good choices, and doing the best things for yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically, and I promise you, what you see in the mirror will improve each day, no matter what shape you're in.

 

How I Spent One Weekend of My Summer Vacation or How To Do Warrior Pose in a Hotel Bathroom

This past weekend I made a trip down to Corpus Christi with my mother and three of my kids.  My niece was getting baptized and we wanted to be there for that occasion.  So we piled into Mom's car and took off.

Two hours from home we hit the worst traffic jam I have ever seen.  Going five miles an hour, sometimes stopping for ten minutes or more at a time was sheer agony.  The highway was cut down to two lanes and there was no end in sight.  So we amused ourselves by making stupid jokes and eventually, I read everyone a story about a man who was afraid of heights. The story ended with the man clinging precariously to a ladder while his friends left him there.  We were irritated after that.  Everyone in the car had to pee, except for the baby, who was wearing a diaper.  We passed a charter bus from Mexico and I considered getting out of the car and knocking on the door to ask for the baño.  At one point we passed a port-a-john on the side of the road that was left there by some workers.  A lady and her daughter actually stopped to use it.  (Ick.)  Another woman got out of her car and retrieved something from her trunk.  Later we saw her dumping the contents of a bottle onto the road.  This wouldn't have been questionable except that it had a pStyle attached to it.  A pStyle allows women to pee on the go.  Do I need to say more?  No, I do not.

We were finally able to exit and found a Family Dollar, which had a line to the bathroom.  The people waiting there had all been stuck on the freeway, and informed us that three 18-wheelers had been involved in an accident.  The woman next to me had a tattoo that said, "Rest In Peace, A.J. Warren."  I wondered if we were related.  There are a lot of Warrens in my line. I spared a brief thought for the demise of A.J. Warren and thought about asking the woman who A.J. Warren was, but then decided it might be rude and anyway, at that point the bathroom opened up and I forgot everything else.

On the way out we bumped into a cop escorting a shackled female prisoner into the store.  They probably had to pee too.

Outside a news station was doing a story on the accident and the kids asked Are we There yet?  We laughed.  And laughed.

Finally, at about ten pm, we arrived in Corpus Christi and checked into our hotel.  The kids had never stayed in a hotel before and thought it was the coolest thing ever and announced that they wanted to live there.  I just wanted to go to sleep.  I went into the bathroom and thought, I will do some yoga poses to loosen up and get rid of some of the stress from that very long car trip.  I came to the conclusion that if you are staying at a hotel, then there is just enough room to do a warrior pose in the bathroom.  I did not do a sun salutation because I was too grumpy.  I decided to take the warrior pose into a downward dog and then I realized, I just touched the bathroom floor with my hands!!!!!!  Gross!  At that point yoga was over and I scrubbed my hands until they had the texture of sandpaper.

The next day was better.  It was better because we got to see our family, and we went to the beach.  How I love the beach!  I love palm trees!  I love sitting in the water and feeling the waves smash into me!  And the kids had a great time.  Of course, there was that moment of truth.  That moment of truth when you're wearing a bathing suit and you have to walk out there, with your porcelain skin and extra pounds and you hope like hell that you don't blind somebody with the glaring whiteness of your flesh.  But then I thought, I only have a couple of hours at the beach, and I love this swimming suit.  And I will stay Glaringly White if I don't walk out there and get some help with Vitamin D.  So I did.  Nobody cared.  I was so offended.  I mean, the paparazzi should have been there.  What is this world coming to??

The only mishap at the beach was that my two year old threw a seashell on the ground that I thought was cool, so we took it back to the house and found out that something was alive inside it.  I felt bad.  Lucky for me, my sister-in-law had a critter keeper and my nieces were thrilled with their new "pet", which would be relinquished to the sea the following day.

I have nothing else to add except that I love Corpus Christi.  It's a great town, and they have amazing bead stores with things you can't find anywhere else.  (Water buffalo teeth, anyone?)  We headed out of town on Sunday and I just want to say that a) I was not allowed to listen to Ozzy Osbourne on the way home, and this hurt my heart and b)My sister-in-law Heather makes the best cake balls in the entire universe, and this should be recorded in all the history books so that all children may know this.  The End.

Thought For The Day

Just because someone is quiet doesn't mean they're not screaming on the inside.

Ten Years Ago Today

Ten years ago today my father was very ill with cancer of the bile duct.  He'd been ill for a long time and I think I was largely in denial about it.  He had spent much of my life complaining about various aches and pains and so when he began to complain about this, I only listened with half an ear.  By the time he was bedridden I didn't visit him that often.  I always regret that now.

July 3 of ten years ago was a day when I was supposed to go visit him.  I had a baby, and two other small children. We were supposed to visit him at a particular time, but getting babies out the door is difficult when they're small.  I called to tell him we were going to come later in the day.  I gave him the time we would be there.  He was barely coherent.

A couple of hours later his wife called to tell me that he had passed away.  The disbelief and shock were overwhelming and it was my task to call and inform my brother, who was at a blood drive, of what had just taken place.  I didn't want to call my brother.  I knew that every minute that I delayed calling him was one more minute that his life would stay normal, but also that it couldn't be put off.  My baby brother...who I could not save from this train wreck that I was about to unleash into his life.  At that point I got to my father's house as soon as I could.  He was still there, laying in his bed, and the feeling in the room was so quiet and powerful.  I couldn't believe he was gone.  I could still feel him everywhere.  And as his daughter, his "little doll" as he liked to call me, I wanted to beg him to come back.  Come back, because there was too much I didn't get to say, and too much left undone.  Come back, because you're still laying there, and shouldn't it be easy, for a mathematician and engineer, to figure out a way to fix this?

But he was gone and the funeral home had been called and I had to watch them carry my father out the door by hand because the gurney wouldn't fit back there into his sickroom.  Really, no one should ever have to see that.  I still remember it to this day and I probably won't ever forget.

My purpose in writing these memories down is not to be morbid or dwell on sad things.  It is simply to record it.  Time blunts the edges of things.  Losing a parent is a traumatic experience.  Some people will tell you it's the circle of life and the natural order of things.  Parents pass on and kids take up the torch and move forward in life.  Regardless of how you look at it...whether it's God's plan or just the way things are...it's painful and it takes a long time to get over.  I am still grieving for him, all of these years later.  It's something I had to learn how to do because in the beginning, I didn't allow myself to.  I shrugged off the pain of it, just like I shrug off a lot of things that hurt like hell.  It reminds me of a kid I saw in a store once.  I worked at a JC Penney department store in a bad part of town.  A kid misbehaved in the store and his mother spanked him right there in the store in front of everyone.  That kid drew himself up and refused to cry and said with all the attitude he could muster, "Didn't hurt."  That's me.  It should be tattooed on my forehead.

But now I can admit that it does hurt and it still hurts a little every day, when I think of it or really recall what was lost.  It's a painful lesson to learn, that people are not permanent.  They will come and go in your life, they will hurt you, disappoint you, use you, leave you.  My father was no different. What I try to remember of my father...what I hold in my heart...is that he was the only dad for me.  He was funny and quirky. He had a ridiculous sense of humor that was as likely to elicit groans as laughter.  He was not afraid to act silly in front of us in order to amuse us.  He was a good cook.  He loved the Cowboys and Star Trek.  He loved cold weather and he loved camping and fishing.  He was brilliant in his mind.  He worked as a lineman for TXU and went to school at night, obtaining a master's degree and becoming an electrical engineer.  In that, he taught me that it's never too late to improve yourself or achieve the goals you set for yourself.  He was my daddy.  I was his princess.  He wasn't perfect.  No one is.

What I know now is that forgiveness is essential for the people in our lives.  I was angry at my father for a long time...for divorcing my mother, for not being able to communicate with us, for a thousand petty things.  What I know now is that these things don't matter.  If you love someone, you have to let go of the little things and you have to recognize that they are as human as you are,and the expectations you have of them shouldn't be any different or any greater than you have of yourself.  I still love my father.  I still miss him, even after all of this time.  And though some may believe differently, what I know is that God's hand has been in my life from the beginning, and that I have not seen the last of my dad.

Yes, I am Busy, and Yes, It Hurts

On Saturday someone in our neighborhood was having a yard sale.  As we drove by I noticed that they had a leather wing chair sitting in their driveway.  When we got home I gave my oldest son and daughter each a couple of bucks to spend and said, While you're down there, ask them how much that chair is.

A little while later my daughter rushed into the house to tell me that my son was on his way home with the chair, trying to carry it, and that he had bought the chair with some money he earned doing yard work.  He said he just wanted me to have it.  It's sitting in our living room right now.  It was incredibly thoughtful and sweet of him to do this, but he ended up straining his back in the process and spent Sunday morning and afternoon sleeping and taking aspirin.  He tried to carry a heavy load and hurt himself.

Of course, you can see the analogy in this.  When we overload ourselves, we get hurt.  We get worn out, tired, bent out of shape, physically and emotionally drained.  Sometimes, it's necessary to say no...to social obligations, to housework or other chores or errands that can wait until later, or it's necessary to delegate responsibilities sometimes while you deal with a personal crisis (even if that crisis is the fact that you only slept two hours and you're afraid to get behind the wheel of a car).  Sometimes it's necessary to put everything on hold while you rest and recharge.  This is not laziness.  This is healthy.  This is taking care of yourself so that you are in the best shape you can be, mentally and emotionally and physically, to take care of the people who depend on you and need you.

A flip side exists to this philosophy, of course, and it involves the people that you say "no" to.  Some people are very understanding.  They've been there, they know what it means to raise children or they realize that you're seriously not a flake, you just have a lot on your plate.  It's the other people I'm talking about....the demanding people.  I had a friend I was very close to at one time.  When her birthday rolled around, I missed it, because I was in the ER with a serious infection.  I texted happy birthday to her and I don't remember if I got a reply.  I was in so much pain there wasn't a lot else I was focused on at the moment.  I didn't hear from her until Christmas, when she texted me that she missed me and Merry Christmas, etc.  I texted back that I missed her too.  Christmas, being one of the most difficult times of year for me, was particularly rough that year.  I avoided people.  I tried to focus on my family.  But I think she got her feelings hurt because she never returned my phone calls or text messages after that.  I finally caught up with her and apologized for not being the friend she needed, and told her I had missed her, and asked her if there was anything I could do for her since her health was suffering.  "Oh no.  I'm fine.  You're busy."  "Well, if you need something, just call and ask, and if I can possibly do it, I will."  "No, you'll be busy."

I have to say that this was like a slap in the face to me.  I had done the best I could.  And I wondered how many times we do this to people...friends, family members...who are so overloaded they are almost drowning, and then we punish them for trying to swim and for not giving us what we think we deserve from them.  It's true I had been busy...with school, kids (a baby and Logan), church, family.  I had done the best I could to stay in touch with her, but it wasn't enough.  At that point, what can you do?  What I learned from that experience and others is that some relationships are really toxic.  If someone drags you down, makes you feel worthless, makes you feel ashamed because in their eyes, you aren't good enough or you're not doing things the way they think you need to do them, or consistently gives you a hard time for perceived failures on your part, then it's time to go.  It's time to stop trying with that person. Stop trying to keep them in your life, when keeping them there is such work in the first place.  If they expect you to jump through hoops for them, and you do that, and they still aren't happy, then what the hell are you hanging around for? Genuine people will genuinely understand that you keeping the important commitments you have and taking care of your responsibilities as a mother or father is not a personal commentary on how you feel about them or your friendship.  Genuine, unselfish people will still be there when you stop and say, You know what, I really need to breathe.  And they won't hold it against you when you actually do.

A Bit of Earth

The picture that you see is a tiny butternut squash that I am currently growing in our raised beds.  This year, I took charge of the garden, and butternut was a must.  It's one of my favorites.

In the book, "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mary Lennox does not want dolls or toys to pass the time.  Instead, she asks, "Might I have a bit of earth?"  I feel like Mary sometimes.  I've found that I am happiest and most at peace when I'm working outside, planting things and watching them change and grow. I learned almost all I know of gardening from my grandmother, Rose Hatcher.  She grew up on a farm in Tolar, Texas.  Almost all the food they had, they grew, and they canned and stored things in a root cellar.  Later in life when she found herself living alone in town, she made the most of her residential plot and created a huge garden every year.  I can still smell the tomatoes and okra, which grew to at least five feet tall if not taller.  I remember neat rows of onions and summer peaches.  And I remember sitting with her in her kitchen with the back door open while she snapped beans or shucked corn.

Now that I have my own kids, I have a huge herb and flower garden and my husband built a small section of raised beds.  For some reason, this year I have really been bitten by the gardening bug and can't seem to stop finding spaces to put things.  Any nook or cranny will do.  The raised beds have butternut and yellow squash, radishes, roma tomatoes, bell peppers, peas, and beans.  And zinnias.  (Hey, companion planting, right?)  I've also planted calla lilies, moonflowers, Rebecca clematis, pink climbing roses, sage, mint, basil, and a fir tree that my son thought would look great in the middle of my amaryllis plot.  It had to be uprooted and repotted...but I'm hoping for a living Christmas tree at some point.  Lavender, Banana Cream shasta daisies, sombrero blanket flowers, and Big Max pumpkins (what was I thinking?  They grow up to 100 pounds.  I know...I should have done it sooner!) round it out.

I'm grateful for the time I get to spend outside, and I'm grateful to my grandmother for passing her knowledge onto me.  If only she could see me now...did she ever think that the weekends she spent with her granddaughter would turn into something like this?  I only remember that going to her house was fun, because she paid attention to me and treated me like I was important.  She included me in everything she did, and even though she's gone, what she gave me will last forever, because I will pass it on to my kids, too.