I'm just a soul whose intentions are good......

............Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. (ahhh, Eric Burdan, what a voice)
Wishful wishing. The problem isn't being misunderstood. The problem is people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that everyone thinks differently. Everyone comes from a different reality, a different place in time, a different thought process. What you think when you're 20 or 50, what your experiences/education has taught you. If only we could be judged by the good we do or the harm we cause. Not what someone else decides or claims to be true.
Let's play Ad-Libs. She dresses like a (insert your stereotype here) she must be ( insert nasty name). He always hangs with (undesirable group) so he probably does (unlawful act). He/she dates a (whatever) so they must be (whatever). Unfortunately the more uncomfortable a person is with their own self image, the harder they judge others. A bad self image causes deep hatred inside. Since we are hardwired to protect ourselves, we lash out at others instead of ourselves. People who seem more comfortable, more happy, more successful than we are. Let's bring them down to our level. If I am walking around the neighborhood, it's not because i enjoy walking, it's because I'm casing out homes for robbery. If I am talking to your boyfriend, it's not because I'm friendly, it's because I'm trying to steal him. If I get home at 3:00am it's not because I decided to hang with some friends after the show, it's because I was shooting up in an alley.
Seven deadly sins, add a couple together and watch the people roll in the mud. Thinking the worse of others makes us happier with ourselves. It's a game people secretly enjoy. EVERYONE is happy to see the person they envy brought down a peg or two. Jealousy/Envy, we all suffer from it once in a while, it's human nature. People just love to hear and spread gossip, "dish dirt", truthful or not. One person, once a close friend of mine said, "awww it's just "Talking Trash" it's not lying". Instead of bettering ourselves, lets just bring them down. Everyone nice and even. Then maybe I'll feel better about myself.
But then, we go too far. The rock starts rolling down the hill. Voicing our jealous suspicions and our envious venom. Stating them as facts and using those false facts to hurt innocent victims. The person who is doing what we want to do, but can't. Lets bring them down, teach them a lesson about being better then us.

Take one envious, middle-aged, bitter, single person and add one gullible, insecure, spouse and have a swig of my life this past year.
I've learned the hard way that a nice juicy story is way more fun for people to believe than the truth. That people just love to find out the worst of someone, especially if it looks like that person was "pretending" to be good. The more you protest your innocence, the more they laugh behind your back. "After all", they think, "I would have done it if I could have, so she probably did too". And " she deserves it, look at how she dances"(envy), "look at how she dresses"(envy) "why, I would never do that" (yea, cause you can't) "She has money and her husband doesn't mind that she travels, what's up with that? It looks fishy to me." (jealousy). "What other reason could she have to go there"(ummm...cause like the other 500 people there, I'm a fan) " She admitted she talked to him"( I talk to every band I film, that's how I get permission )
So, like the old shampoo commercial, she tells someone, and they tell someone, and so on, and so on. You find out who your friends really are and who just rather go along with the company line, it's much easier that way. After all, "It's not really my concern" and "I rather be friends with the more important side". Who really cares? " If they make a 'movie of the week' about it, maybe I'll be outraged for you", but only cause it's the popular thing to do at the moment.

Being proven innocent didn't give Fatty Arbuckle back his career or Bruno Hauptmann back his life. But time heals wounds and it can vindicate. The person who spreads dirt, is dirt. The gullible will always believe what they are told to believe, that is their own purgatory. Self doubt is it's own agony.

I first started blogging in a preemptive attempt to explain who and what I am. As a dancer and a "not too bad looking for my age" female, I have often dealt with misunderstandings by both the opposite sex and their significant others. It's hard for people to understand where I'm coming from until they get to know me. My husband and I are very much married, best friends for 36 years. I spent 30 years raising and caring for my children. I never had a young adult life. I'm just starting to catch on to the club and bar scene. I have an empty nest. I miss caring for others, so I care for young bands who need a little help now and then. I have always loved my dancing and now, without obligations at home, I can go out and dance to the bands I love to follow. The years I've spent videotaping and photographing my children gave me the experience to help bands promote themselves.

I have never wanted anything more then to help promote those things I care about. I have never asked for anything in return, I'm a mom, moms rarely get thanks, it's our job after all .
I only hope that those people I helped and who called me friend would judge me by what I have done for them and not by the gossip stitched together with half truths, hearsay and delusion.
8 months and it still hurts. Injustice is always a bitter pill. Time, give it time........

Baby, do you understand me now?

If sometimes, you see that I'm mad ...

Don't you know no one alive can always be an angel,

When everything goes wrong, you see some bad.

(group harmony) But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good:

(just Burdon) Oh Lord! Please don't let me be misunderstood ...

Band Mom

No I'm not selling frozen turkeys and peanut butter cups for uniforms.   Not trying to fund raise with magazine subscriptions for trips to Disney World to perform. The fact is none of my kids were in the High School Band.

My daughters both played Violin in the School Orchestra; they wore their own dressy white shirt with a black skirt or pants. My son was in a garage band (Negative Salute or N/S) for a few years, but they never made it out of the garage.  I am a different kind of Band Mom.

I met my adopted sons when they opened for my favorite band during a road trip in North Carolina. Marty and I were already taking a lot of flack for our second C! trip in a month. We didn't care; we were going to see C! 2 more times, AWESOME . In retrospect, it was the second turning point in my life this year.

Reggae/Rock is hard to explain until you've heard it. Anyone who dances loves Reggae, but think of putting in some riff-rock and a hard edge. Mix it up with some honest, hardworking kids (OK, so they're in their 20's, that = kid to me). Add some real catchy lyrics with a twist. Result??  A Band called Lionize.

Serendipity doesn't come close to describing the star crossed events that intersected to give me 4 more sons. Both fortunate and unfortunate events conspired together.  I'll try to sort them out.

·                     Unfortunate; The vocalist for C! was ill (that was a horrible time for all of us); we couldn't find a hotel room near the second show.

·                     Fortunate; the first show was empty, giving us tons of space to dance. We had to hang out at all day at the venue on the second day.

In Jacksonville NC, we danced our......um.....tushies off to this new sound that we both fell in love with. We brought their CD and played it all the way to Fayetteville, singing along the whole time.  Then in Fayetteville, being the only vehicle in the parking lot besides the bands' transportation, we got invited to hang out with members of all 3 bands (AWESOME< AWESOME)

      

Already in love with the music, we fell in love with the boys.

While C! traveled in their mega tour bus and stayed in hotels, our poor boys traveled in a beat-up van and slept in the back with a generator feeding a jury-rigged Air Conditioner (Yes I know C! started that way too, but that's not my story to tell)

It broke our hearts and we decided we would do anything we could to ease their journey to success. We adopted them.

So what does my brand of band mom do????   Whatever we can do to care for them when we go to see them and whatever we can do to promote them  all the time.

Hopefully, the little things we do will help them get where they want to be a little faster, make things a little easier, and make them happy to have met us and invited us into their world.  

That's all a mom can hope for.

To Clean up Poo, or not clean up poo ? That's the question.

7:30 last night, I'm dragging my rug cleaner from room to room. The upholstery attachments are slung over my shoulder. Outside the weather continues to build into huge storms, then suddenly break back into hot-humid air. I have the AC on, but I'm still feeling sweaty and miserable. Wasn't it just a couple days ago that I was crowing about how nice it was to have my family around me. Stupid family, I drag the equipment into another room(why does this stupid house have so many rooms?). I am on a quest to find a missing diaper, and I'm cleaning the poo trails along the way.

Early in the afternoon, I was happy as could be, every thing was neat, I had done 3 loads of laundry(I love doing laundry). My bookwork was all tidied up at the store, ready for the end-of-month billing(today). I had a couple chickens roasting in the oven (yeah, I know, roasting when it's 95 outside; sounds dumb but I feed 4 adult males, and they want meat.) I was actually taking a (Suduko) break, when my daughter and her fam. arrived. They were going over to the pool (at my in-laws house) I was going to stay home to finish dinner and feed the babies. Everything is going like clockwork, twins fed and rocking in their swings, dinner ready to come out of the oven, when things took a dramatic change.

The first hiccup, in this wonderful "family having dinner together scene" , was when I spilled hot grease down my arm while dogging a falling butcher knife, resulting in a nasty burn on my forearm, and grease all over the floor.(but the knife did miss my bare foot). Temperature rising,(I am Irish), deep breaths, assure O that Gam is OK, carry on.
Dinner goes fine, O(as always) stands up when he's done and he runs off to play. We sit and chat, all that fun, family dinner table stuff. When J goes to check on what her little boy is up too, all hell breaks loose.

J: " AHHHHHHH, OMG!!!!!!!"
US: "What, what happened, whats wrong?"
J: "O's diaper is missing and he pooped all over."

Now J swears she put a diaper on her son after swimming; he looked like he had a diaper under his shorts when they returned.
People being running in every direction. My husband grabs the phone and announces he has to answer the order line for the next day at the store. W(the great dad) decides this would be an excellent time to go to the office and read my blog. G decides to play the piano(to drown out the women screaming, I guess).

ME: " Where is it"?
J:" all over".
K: " eeewww, it's on the sofa and the ottoman".
J: " Where's the diaper"?
ME & K: " Where's the.......Diaper??? You can't find the diaper??"
ALL the Girls: Find the diaper !!!
J: "W, we need help, NOW"
W: "I can't hear you, I'm reading your mom's blog".
K: "G, help us look".
G: "huh...?"

The girls run to every room, but there is no diaper to be found. The best we can tell, he must of undone the tabs (cause they make him itch) and the diaper must of fallen out of his shorts(his shorts are loose because he is a beanpole). Then, when nature called, he let his masterpiece slid down his leg, onto the floor, and stepped in it; subsequently dragging it all over the house and furniture.

So, at 7:30, I'm cleaning every inch of carpet and upholstery in the house(J, did wipe down the hard surfaces with Lysol before she took her poopy family home). The burn on my right arm rubs against the handle of my Rug Doctor, I grit my teeth. After dinner is the time I unwind and catch up on e-mail. Stupid Family, stupid poo.

As I start on my office i take a quick glimpse at my inbox. There is a message I had been waiting for from a close friend that I had not heard from in a while. I am dying to see what he has to say, but the poo is still fresh and easy to find now. What to do? Sit down and I can get lost online for hours. I really want to read that letter.

At 7:31 I am dragging my rug cleaner to another room, When poo calls, you answer the call.

So, how was your day????

Forever Young ??? Yep !

A funny thing happens when your children grow up. One night you look around and realize you've been left behind. The people you stayed home to watch and entertain every night of your adult life have gone out with new friends and you feel lonely. It really isn't funny, I mean, you didn't see me laughing when it happened to me 5 years ago.

Getting married right out of high school was a very 70's thing to do. The problem was, starting so young; you never get to enjoy the grownup things in life. In fact, you don't even know what they are. Imagine, you can't drink at your own wedding. Married 2 years, living in my own house, daughter 11 months old, that’s when I could legally have my first drink.

C (adored hubby) is a business owner and the business comes first, 7 days, 80+ hours per week. So I was home (when I wasn’t working P/T at his business) ALWAYS. I was DP (Designated Parent) 24/7 until my last little baby got her driver’s license and drove away without me.

Am I old? Do I have to spend the rest of my life doing genteel old lady stuff? Hell No! I was 45, but I felt like I was 25 and NOW, I'm having some fun.

Unfortunately for me, all our adult friends were happy to continue their lives where they were. No time travel for them. So, step one, meet new people. What to do?? Well, K and her friends are out (too young), B and his friends are out too (too wild and promiscuous). That leaves J, who is soon to be a bride and her Fiancé who just happens to be in a band that plays nightclubs. This sounds promising.

Went to see a show, liked the whole deal, and became a groupie at the ripe young age of 45. Once you take that first step towards the unknown, each one get a little easier.

Here are some other big steps I took in the summer of 2003, when I discovered my wings.

1. After years of teaching dance, finally went to workshops and got certified as a Balletone/Pilates instructor.
2. Missing the discovery through the eyes of a child, I invited my young niece to go on our annual week long camping trip.
3. Started to actually start conversations with people and learn how to go from the outside to the inside of a group.
4. Discovered Clutch.

Summer of 2008, I’m still taking new steps in every direction. But 2003 was a huge leap forward in my evolution. Now I believe that anything is possible and I think twice before deciding against doing things that may be difficult.

I have a mental list, I expand on it everyday. New goals to accomplish. Things unthought-of yesterday. I want to learn to play the drums. I want to hike in every National Park. I want to sleep in the desert tonight (just kidding). And I want to see the inside of that damn tour bus.

What do you still need to do?

Momaholics Untie (LOL)

Now you all know I am a Momaholic (Addicted to being a mom). I admit it’s a sickness. It’s not enough for me to feed my family. No, I have to go out of my way to insure that even my children who have moved out try to sit at the table every night. It’s not that I want them there(not saying I don’t). It’s not even that I enjoy cooking all that much (even though I’m referred to as “The Italian Mother, who just happens to be Irish”). I just can’t seem to stop myself from doing things to help people, or at least trying to. My family likes to tease me about it, but just let me go away for day. It’s the end of the world.

Tonight’s topic at the table, which included J, her husband, little O, & the negative twins (sounds like a band!) was about how I would rhapsodize tonight about my broken microwave vegetable steamer. The negative twins were moaning about how stupid blogging was and why should they have to read it(kids, on the cusp of 21, know everything) The married couple was complaining that I must have too much time on my hands, since I have time to write. They had big plans for my free time, all involved me taking the twins (the real twins, not the negative ones). My hubby, as predictable as the seasons, kept his eyes down and his mouth full (as a middle child, he knows how to stay out of trouble). So where was I? Standing at the counter, because the kitchen table only seats six, listening to my families’ debate. I was smiling to myself. I am so lucky to have this. Twin 4 month olds asleep on the sofa, my 22 month old pride and joy throwing rice in the air, my adult children(and childen-in-law) arguing over who does more to help me, and my other half enjoying what I made for him.

But, I am going to miss that steamer!

Taking Multitasking up a Notch

As I’m sweating Vidalias for homemade cheesesteaks, I’m thinking about the best topic to start this Blog space off. Should I start off funny right away to “Grab” people, tell about myself, explain my Blog space title? Stories run through my head. There’s not much room in there. I am also, checking my time, preparing the other elements dinner, running the list of things I need to pack in my car for my trip, wondering why I decided to steal my grandson and invite my mother on the little getaway I will be heading out on in less than an hour, and why did I just call mom an hour ago and offer to drop off dinner for her and Dad before we leave? Let’s see, B (my son) likes me to use chicken instead of steak and wants hot peppers, onions, & ketchup. K (my daughter) and G (her live-in fiancé’) want to eat later. They want the meat and onions packed separately, so they can assemble their sandwiches later without soggy rolls. My hubby will eat anything I place on his plate, but for him I go “all out”. Wait a minute; I’m going all out for all of them.

Tourists think a cheese steak is a gooey mess, dripping with grease and cheese wiz, purchased on the street in center city. Those are the Mickey D version of Philly’s favorite sandwich. Way to get sick, fast. My steak sandwiches involve more steps than even Alton Brown would consider. I have the oven on constantly (the oven? Isn’t this a fried sandwich)? Preparing the Italian rolls is one of the most important steps. To cut down on drippy mess, everything is cooked separate and drained. Each sandwich assembled for the preference of the recipient. Yes, I am insane, but more on that later.

Here is my recipe for Philly cheese steaks (with apologies to my vegetarian friends)

• · Long Italian rolls (Amaroso preferred)
• · Good quality chipped steak ( like steak-umms)

• · Deli sliced real American cheese

• · Sweet onions (Spanish, or in spring, Vidalias)

All ingredients must be prepared simultaneously. (Have fun!!)

Rolls- slice, open, put in 350 oven till turning gold, cover all inside surface with sliced cheese, return to oven till cheese melts, add ketchup (for those who want it), return to oven.

Steaks, in a deep pot, heat a few tablespoons of virgin olive oil, break steak into pieces, cook over slow heat, turning every minute or so (to keep bottom from overcooking). When there is no more pink showing, dump steak into colander and pat with paper towels.

Onions- Slice, sweat in butter over medium heat, Keep onions from becoming brown, when onions are translucent and limp, drain and dump on paper towels.

Assemble, according to each person’s wants. Onions (or not), steak, more onions (or not) ketchup (or not), Cheese broken in strips and laid diagonal across finished sandwich, put back in the oven till cheese melts.

That’s pretty much how I make them. Now I will throw some reserved onions back in the pan and fry up some thin chicken breast strips with diced long-hots for B’s sandwich)

Of course if you want a real challenge, try making it this way, the way I did this time.

• · Start cooking all ingredients, start making the ice tea, run to throw the wet clothes in the dryer, check food, start dialing phone, continue to run down mental list, sing same 4 lines of current SSIH (song stuck in head) to yourself.

• · Check food(turn down onions, remove rolls), Tell daughter what time you’ll pick up O. Glance at food , end call, run to other side of house grab something you almost forgot to pack, check e=mail on way back to kitchen(might as well, it’s on the way). Run back to kitchen, continue meal prep, Start second pitcher of ice tea, where did I put my camera??, Find camera and throw it in suitcase. Back to kitchen, stir meat, rolls out again, turn off onions. Phone rings, answer phone, tell son what time his meal will be ready. Set table, get O’s little car from the patio and put it in back of car, smile at hubby (who is drumming his fingers on table). Rolls out again. SSIH still spilling from mouth.

• · Finish all cooking, start assembly. Pour ice tea in glasses, call upstairs on intercom for kids. Damn, I almost forgot………run to get item and throw in car. SSIH starting to annoy me, turn on TV (Seinfeld’s on) Get hot sandwiches from oven, cut each in half, put in front of starving family.

• · Sit to eat(yes, I got to do that), Jump up and clean up kitchen, wrap 2 sandwiches in tin foil and return to oven, Run to get last items in car. Check E-mail, turn off computer. Load and start dishwasher. Kiss hubby goodbye, grab hot, wrapped sandwiches and run to car, while yelling over shoulder “please keep kitchen clean, and don’t forget to feed cats”

• · In car, turn IPOD on, choose same SSIH. Drive to parent’s house, drop off dinner. Drive to daughter’s house, pick up O. Drive back to parents, pick up mom.

• · Finally, drive 2 hours to shore. Unload everything. Find out the person who borrowed the house last weekend didn’t clean up or do laundry. Start washer.

Ahhhh, nothing like a relaxing 2 day- get away to the shore. What could be more fun than cutting the lawn with a whinny toddler wrapped around your legs? A chance to kickback and weedwack(cause no one has bothered, even though they promised to. Look at the glorious Vinca choking the gardens! Marvel at how much dust can accumulate. When was the last time house was cleaned?? Oh, yea, the last time I was there.

So this is my first blog post. I decided to tell about myself. I am a mother, who doesn’t know when to stop, and really wouldn’t want to. That is me in a nutshell (figuratively and literally.) Sure, I bitch and complain, but isn’t it obvious I do it because I want to. It makes me happy to take care of everyone, so I do.