Oh, My....

This has been the busiest last four days...well, maybe not the busiest.  But far busier than I am comfortable with.  I don't mind working but I do mind working too much.  My grandmother would always say to me, "I am not afraid of work, I can lay down right beside it and go to sleep." I don't understand overachieving at things we don't have to overachieve on.

Like natural childbirth.

I tried it...it was awful!!  They lied to me, they said the childbirth process is beautiful...you don't need medication.  What a pile of excrement...I bought into all that focal point stuff only to discover it is hard to concentrate on focal points when you are screaming in pain.  I know it will not be written on your  tombstone that you endured natural childbirth.  Horrible pain versus one shot for total bliss?  Not really a coin toss in my book.

There are a lot of things I either bought into, or felt guilty that I didn't do.  It seems children who are put to bed at a decent hour each night, are no smarter or responsible than children who simply fell asleep on the floor.  Hey, don't judge, I put a blanket on them...

And then there was nursing.  I was a nursing mom because I had children when the La Leche League ruled the world of young moms.  If you didn't nurse your children you were not a good mother. Don't tell anyone but I did it because it was cheap and easy.  No bottles to wash and no formula to buy.  Bonus?  I looked like the perfect mom.   We were told cows milk is for calves and giving them milk was practically poison.  However, my children still got allergies, they got colds, and that stupid RSV thing (while I was nursing by the way).  Cure all?  Nope...

How about moms working?  There was a fence 10 miles high between working moms and stay at home moms.  For awhile the working moms were winning....what do you do?  They would ask...knowing I was obviously too stupid to actually get a job since all I did was wander around my house in my bathrobe.  I usually came back with my usual, "I am a rice farmer."  Then the stay at home moms won for awhile when it turned out being at home with children was actually rewarding.  Then too many working moms left the work force for the PTA....I remember volunteering with a woman who used to be some big deal at a hotel on the strip.  She started making it all work and serious...like our $500 fundraiser wasn't good enough.  She changed things around, raised $37,000 and put in a petting zoo....guess who had to feed the goats?

It seems all of our kids came out the same...with just as many problems and just as many successes.  What a lot of wasted time trying to decide who was right, not to mention a lot of hurt feelings.   I met a woman who told me she prayed about what she was supposed to do every day and assumed everyone else did too.  Who was she to judge someone's decision? That was simple brilliant logic.

Who is right and who is wrong?

And Martha Stewart with her revolution of being everything, doing everything and being perfect.  It was a relief when she went to jail, we could practically eat out of cans without feeling guilty it wasn't made from scratch.  Wasn't it amazing when we found out all those things she seemed to be doing herself was done by a staff?  Here I was chopping my wood and carrying my water and she was just pointing to things that needed to be done.  

Oh, Martha

Low fat, non fat, carbs are good, carbs are the devil, Protein only, vegans, vegetarians and juicers.   Do you know I found a notebook of my mothers after she had passed where she had carefully journaled, everything she  ate and how the diet she was on was working.  That is the only writing I have of hers....a journal of food she ate.

What is right and what is wrong?

It's all very clear now that
I don't know very much, and the experts I listened to knew even less.
One great thing about getting older is I don't have to be right, and if I think you are wrong I don't have to tell you about it.  I don't have to be right...
All those rules, all those hoops I jumped through, all the parenting books, marriage books, diet books, exercise books.......all the millions of self help books.....turns out the best advice was.....

"Go to bed at 10 and get up at 6 and let the day take care of itself"  Gordon B. Hinckley