If you are a girl or have a girl in the house who has anything other than that super-cute pixie cut that Katie Holmes is sporting these days, then you feel my pain.  Maybe you throw them in a basket.  Perhaps in a drawer. Wherever you chose to hide them, they are never far away, for they’re always in a corner of your mind when you approach the bathroom.  Will they fall out when you open the bathroom closet door?  Must you remove twenty of them from the clutches of the brushes bristles before combing your hair?  Uh, huh…You know exactly what I’m talking about,  You’re nodding your head right now.   In my case, the culprits are not merely elastic hair ties.  Oh, no…behind the closed closet doors and drawers, hair accessory orgys have been happening, leaving behind bastard barrettes, headbands, elastics with plastic ball-thingy’s on them, ribbons, bobby pins, scruncies, hair clips, and even one or two of those contraptions that profess to spin your hair into a perfect bun–if you knew how to use it.  In our case,there are three girls in the house.  As for myself, tote my hair elastic around on my wrist…all the time.   You’ve seen me.   My glorified rubberband hangs faithfully on my wrist as I wear sweats, jeans, dresses, and yes…even gowns.  On good days they match.  But that’s just me.  We also have two daugthers.  Nine and Three.  I’ve weaned my oldest away from frivilous hair accessories and have shown her the beautiful simplicity of the ’hair wristlet’.  My three year old is an entirely different story and thus the primary reason behind my needing to get a grip on our bathroom closet.  We literally dedicated an entire closet to the storage of hair stuff. 

If this sounds even vaguely familiar and you’re looking for a way to take back your closet, this is what I did…

Time required : About an hour   Materials required: Determination, garbage can, old spaghetti jars, ribbon, stapler, a mess of hair accessories

The process…I went through each and every hair accessory and sorted them: small elastics, elastics with plastic thingys, large elastics, barettes, ribbons, and headbands.  You may need more or less piles than these.  Also, I had a garbage can handy and threw away any hair thing that was broken or stretched.  What are we saving those for anyway?   After I had everything sorted, I took about a 3 foot strand of grosgrain ribbon and placed it vertically on the inside wall of the closet, securing it to the wall at either end of the ribbon (top and bottom) with my stapler.  To this ribbon, I clipped on barrettes, bobby pins, hair clips.., etc.  Having children gives value to clean spaghetti sauce jars.  We keep ‘em all and always find ways to reuse them.  This came in handy for my bathroom project.  I took my small elastics, large elastics, and ‘plastic elastics’ and placed each pile into their own jar.  You could use these sorting jars with or without lids.  I preferred to use the lids even though I wasn’t crazy about how it looked.   So what I did was to paint the lids with black chalkboard paint.  After the paint dried I wrote on the chalkboard lids, labeling the jars with a white crayon.  The last of my sorted piles was about 16 headbands…now I’m positive that even a household of 3 girls does not need 16 headbands, but they really are just too pretty to toss, so I needed to come up with a way to keep them organized and not in their normal jumbled mess.  Enter the Oatmeal container or the infamous Pub Mix container.  If you’re a costco shopper, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  The Pub Mix comes in a plastic container which is see-through and about 12″ tall.   I placed the headbands on this container, which has the added bonus of extra storage inside the pub mix container!!

So there you have it…hope some of these suggestions work for you!!

So these horrible things just continue.  I often go in spurts with these palpitations.  They started 4 years ago.  I remember the day distinctly, because it was the day of my friends wedding.  Later that evening, I experienced the palpitations for the first time.  For a while after that, they were sporadic.  An episode here, an episode here.  Initially, I literally thought I was on the verge of death.  One too many web searches fueled my gloom and doom attitude.  A visit to the ER and a cardiologist lead me to believe I was beginning my psychological decline.  After a brief affair with zoloft or whatever mood-enhancing/altering drug they prescribed me, I ceased all contact with physicians for about 2 years.   In retrospect,  I suppose they would automatically assume that I was merely suffering from stress or panic attacks or something like that..at the time, I was about 5 months from my wedding.  Nevertheless, they’ve never gone away.  As I sit here writing this, they punctuate my thoughts better than my periods and commas amongst my words.  At any rate, my life is far from stressful.  Ironically, the only significant source of stress I feel is when the onset of palpitations occur.  They are literally so close to driving me crazy that when they occur, I allow my life to stop.  Whatever I am doing ceases. At their onset, I cease to live in the moment and retreat inside a shell of self-pity and terror.   From the reading I’ve done online, there are many times of palpitations.  What I experience is a prolonged, exaggerated pause, which immediately makes me acutely aware of the functioning of my heart.  It normally occurs in strings for 15 minutes or so.  Sometimes longer.  About every 8th beat will not happen, then two beats occur quickly, as if it is catching up.  That’s the only way I can explain it.  Someone who hasn’t experienced this mental trauma probably thinks I’m crazy.  At least my husband doesn’t thinkI’m crazy   God, I love him!  He has felt them happen through my pulse and heard them by pressing my ear against my chest.  Granted, when he feels/hears them, he looks at me as if I’ve grown a third ear or  eye and says, “Why aren’t you going to the doctor?” 

I guess I’m just ranting and raving on here.  Totally and completely fed-up with this happening.  And I’m exhausted.  And when I say exhausted, I mean that I’m to the point that I can get 8 hours of sleep a night, and then can very easily drift off on a morning as well as an afternoon nap.  Not to mention I have no energy.  Perhaps it’s my state of mind?  I welcome any comments of stories that are similar to mine!

…so either I didn’t think this whole raw-food-diet-thing through or I simply didn’t do enough reading and research to fully understand what I was getting myself into…let’s just say, “I won’t be doing that anymore.”  After further research, it seems that practicing a ‘raw diet’ equates to cooking as little as possible.  Foods heated over a certain temperature do not qualify as raw.  My intentions were to eat more foods which were not so overly processed. 

That I can do.  Except when it comes to my crockpot lasagna this evening…I don’t remember where I found the recipe, but if anyone’s interested, my husband likes this almost more than regular lasagna…

Ingredients:  1lb ground beef, chicken, or turkey, 2 jars of spaghetti sauce, 1 bag of egg noodles, 3 cloves garlic, 1 onion-chopped, small container of cottage cheese, 1 egg, 2 cups mozzarella cheese, 1/2 cup parmesan cheese. 

Method to the Madness:  Spray your crockpot with pam or another non-stick cooking spray.  Boil egg noodles in a large pot of water.  Meanwhile, brown meat, adding crushed and chopped garlic cloves, onions, and sauce.  Allow this to simmer.  In a bowl, whisk your egg, then add the entire container of cottage cheese and mix together.  In a second bowl, mix together the mozzarella and parmesan cheese.  Your noodles should be done by now, so drain in a colandar.  Begin by placing a bit of your meat sauce in the crockpot’s bottom.  Begin layering: Egg Noodles, Cottage Cheese, Meat Sauce, Mozz cheese, etc.  Until all your ingredients are gone.  Cook on low for about 3-4 hours.  My family loves this one!  When my husband asks what’s for dinner, I get a “Oooo” response on this one!

On a side note, I finally had some Bear Naked granola this afternoon.  Amazing!  I eyeball the bag everytime I’m in the store and quite frankly couldn’t see spending over 5 bucks on that teeny-tiny bag.   Today I read the label, and seeing nothing but natural ingredients and sweeteners (honey), I had to have some.  I’ll just say that it was 5 bucks well-spent, and I’m looking oh-so-forward to breakfast tomorrow!!!

Is there such a thing? My heart palpitations, which I mentioned months ago are getting worse.  I’ve been keeping pretty close track of them and they intensify around my period.  That could mean one of two things…(or maybe both?).  On a good day, any blood test comes back telling me that my iron’s low.  Through internet research, I found that sometimes heart palpitations are caused by low iron or anemia.  Sounds promising…pop an iron supplement, no more wacky heartbeat.  Option two is that it’s hormonal.  Can changes in hormone levels cause palpitations?  Or is it possible that both issues are intertwined, creating erotic yet unruly spastic dances in my body?  At any rate, I truly feel as if these episodes are robbing me of my youth, vigor, and humor.  I read a quote recently that said, “It’s not the cards you are delt, but how you play the hand.”  (I’m terribly sorry I can’t give credit where credit is due, but I can’t remember where I read that)  In my case, having these irregularities in my heart has cast a severly dark storm cloud over my previously bright and carefree life.  When they start, I literally start doing little prayers to God;

“Dear God, please let me wake up and see my girls tomorrow.” 

or

 ”God, I know I don’t have many prayer-answering-points built up, since we don’t go to church and all, but all I really want is to see both my girls get married.  That’s all.  Nothing else.  Please.  Seriously.”

So, I’m constantly walking around thinking each minute is about to be my last.  How horrible is that?  And really, I’m only venting on here, simply because I seriously have HAD it.  I used to be a girl who ran for distance.  For fun.  I enjoyed it–no really, did.  Sometimes I ran twice a day.  Now I’m afraid to walk around the neighborhood at too fast a clip.  What if my heart has so many beats left in it’s poor, weak, four-chambered structure.? Who the hell wants to waste those remaining, numbered beats on running, if I can drag it out by sitting around? 

You see how pathetic it’s become? 

So, the whiner part of my seemingly multiple personality riddled self is done and the problem-solver is stepping in.  I’m vowing that tomorrow I will lay off the coffee and sugar.

(God, please send me a sign that I should drink coffee)

I’m going to be a bitch.

I’m thinking a modified raw food diet will do me good for a couple of weeks…If there’s any improvement, then I’ve probably definately hit on something.  I just refuse to believe that these palpitations are happening ‘because’.  Everything has a reason…even if we don’t always know what it is.  I’m just hoping that something in my body is low.  Potassium, Magnesium, Calcium, something.  Something that will allow me to solve my problem.  I desperately need to get past this, it makes me feel so pathetic. 

(God, please just help me find what it is). 

And I was making crockpot lasagna tomorrow. 

(God, you know how good that is…maybe you could just make my body not notice if I have some for supper?)

And so here I am this evening at 11:12.  Beginning my modified raw food diet.  Of course, I have to modify the diet a bit, because I simply can’t eat nothing but raw foods, so I’m allowing for whole wheat bread (5g of fiber per slice) and things like that. 

(Thank you God for making easter candy grow on trees)

I’ve been meaning to mention this for quite some time and keep forgetting…anyhow, we have successfully potty-trained our youngest daughter!  Whoo-hoo.  I am not an expert of children by any means.  Common sense seems to have served me fairly well this far in my mothering adventure of 9 years and counting… and so these are my reflections on potty-training.  My personal tips, if you will…

First, and foremost, listen to that little voice in your head.  What’s it saying?  Follow that.  I read article after article about potty-training.  Most articles give you a few criteria that your child should meet in order to be ‘ready’ for potty-training.  Mine had none of those signs.  She didn’t tell me when she had to go.  She didn’t care to sit on the potty.  She wasn’t interested in the potty.  She didn’t stay dry during naps.  She did, however, know how to pull her own pants up and down.  She turned 2 in May and I decided to start after Halloween. 

Second…if you’re still reading, then yo’ve got to make a commitment.  If you are a stay-at-home mom, you must commit to staying home without outings for about 2 weeks.  When I decided we were going to give it a try, I stopped running around during the days and ran my errands in the evening when dad was home.  Let’s face it, if you’re just now at this point, I doubt that you’re going to try to take your little on in your car, hoping she or he can ‘hold it’.  And if you’re just beginning, believe, me…they can’t.  So, putting a diaper on and off to go away is only going to delay the process.  It’s probably going to become confusing.  Decide your staying home. For a little bit, at least.

Third, and most important.  Please do not fall into the disposable underwear trap.  Just because it does not have to velcro tabs on either side of the waistband and it’s not called a diaper doesn’t mean it’s not a diaper.  If it looks like a diaper and smells like a diaper….you guessed it.  It’s probably a diaper.  Pull-up diapers are just one more way to squeeze a few more hundred dollars out of you, and they delay the training process.  Go out and buy about three packs each of underwear and plastic pants.  Plastic pants can normally be found in the same area as the cloth diapers.  When you begin potty-training, wear the underwear beneath the plastic pants.  Do not buy the plastic pants large enough to have room to grow into.  You want them to fit snugly.  If they do, pee will not escape their confines–at least not in detrimental amounts.  (think sprinkles as opposed to storms.)  A good tip for these plastic pants:  When your child does have an accident, don’t pull their pants down!!  ( I tried that once, it didn’t work) sit them on the potty and insert your finger into one leg of the plastic pants.  Pull it  away from their leg, and the pee will drain into the potty.  Goingto the bathroom in these underwear will become uncomfortable for your child.  That’s good!  It’s not like the pull-up, where most of the moisture is absorbed, leaving cute designs on the outside indicating an accident has occured. 

Fourth, decide you are going to begin.  That morning, put on the underwear and plastic pants.  Realize that you are going to probably replace these no less than 6 times today.  Explain to your child that we are going to use the potty.  After getting dressed, go sit on the potty. 

Now, you can proceed in one of two ways.  I’ve had success with both. 

Your first option is to just allow accidents to occur.  When they do, take your child into the bathroom to sit on the potty, then clean up/get fresh underwear on. 

Your second option is to purchase an inexpensive egg timer and set it to go off every 15 minutes.  When the bell dings, you can either have your child sit on the potty, or just ask if they have to go to the potty.   This method is particularly helpful for the child who easily gets ‘lost’ in play.  It’s also useful for the parent who simply forgets to give periodic reminders. 

Regardless of which option works best for you, the end result should be a child who is learning the concept of using the potty.  Be forewarned, the first week is going to be terrible and you are going to want to give up.  You are going to feel as though the only thing you’ve done was clean up bodily fluids.  But you will notice a gradual progress in your child.  I’ve used this method twice and have had very successful results.  The first few days, we had accidents all over the place.  By the end of the first week, we were still having accidents,–but the accidents were getting closer to the bathroom.  By the middle of the second week, we were having about 90% success rate with making it to the potty.  And now, “Mommy, I went ucky” is heard daily from my child whose hanging half off the toilet seat, waiting for someone to come wipe her hiney. 

I’m a mother.  I used to be in the military.  I’ve done some pretty gross thing, and haven’t had to deal with any ’weak stomach’ issues.  I’ve cleaned throw-up and held back hair during vomiting sessions without flinching…And yet, this evening I was as sick to my stomach as I’ve ever been.  

This afternoon, I got a craving for warm, soft tortellini smothered in a buttery sauce and topped with parmesan cheese.  Mmmmmm   Sounds good, right?  I thought so too.  I remembered that I’d picked up a box at the store last week so I planned on having that and cod filets for dinner.  So, my water’s doing a rolling boil and I snip open the package and pour my little noodles into the pot.  Hmm.  That’s weird, ’me thinks to meself’. I’ve never had tortellini that’s flavored with sesame seeds.  I check out the box again, thinking it was Chinese tortellini.   (I know that’s wrong on so many levels for so many reasons, but that’s what popped into my head.)  Nope it’s Italian.  So I resume watching Oprah on my little under the cabinet tv and just got that feeling that something wasn’t quite right.  That not-quite-right- feeling wouldn’t let me go, so I grabbed a spoon and started stirring it around in my stainless steel tortellini pot. 

BUGS.  Frickin’ BUGS.  Perhaps Discovery’s Survivorman or Bear Gylls would welcome this little added protein bonus.  I do not.  I think I may never eat tortellini again.  I’m still seeing it when I close my eyes.  I a ton of pictures and quick fired off a letter to the company.  Unfortunately, I didn’t follow that rule where you wait 30 minutes or so before acting so that you are operating with some semblance of ration, so I pity the poor mail clerk who opens my package.  I’m sending some of the noodles with embedded bugs.  I can’t get in trouble for that, can I?  At least they’ll feel my pain. 

So, I took my final test of the quarter this afternoon.  On Easter.  What the hell?   Relief doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about the end of my second quarter at Drexel…

So I have a whole week to relax and not think about school…though I’m ashamed to admit, I started doing that about 3 weeks ago.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  It’s like I’m in this perpetual effervescent fog which precludes me from doing a damn thing.  I’m a stay-at-home mom slash student and I swear, these days it’s taking me a week to do a load of laundry, and let me tell you, in my family of four (three of us girls), not doing laundry every other day isn’t an option.  At 31 should I be as confused as I am?  I’m going to school to be a teacher.  I love children.  I love observing them.  I love the cute things they say and the cute little faces they make… so then why did I have the overwhelming urge to push a three-year old off his tricycle this afternoon? It was during our walk.  Now granted, he was ramming his bike into my youngest daughter, so I feel that I have a right to be irritated.  But I’m concerned about how I envisioned him falling off the bike and rolling down the hill behind him after I pushed him (the push was only in my mind, of course!) 

Somedays I think it would be fabulous to have a therapist that I visited regularly…

The next best thing to a shrink is Glenn Harrold.  I found a few of his products on Amazon.com.  He sells hypnotherapy (see! my own personal shrink!) cds for various ailments.  I have purchased Four of them.  Learn How to Think Positively, Reach Your Full Potential,  Deep Sleep-something-or-other, and Chakra Meditation.  I loaded the first two onto my mp3 player so I can listen to them at night before I fall asleep.  This is really the only time I have to listen to them (undisturbed).  For such a smart girl–which I consider myself to be–I guess it’s not the brightest thing in the world to fall asleep with my headphones in and the mp3 player floating around in the bed…but so far so good.  The theory behind it is that he’s using his soothing (which it is) voice to lull you into a state of sleep, so that he can massage your subconscious with is words and phrases.  I think the biggest drawback I’ve experienced thus far is having Fergalicious being the next thing on my playlist after these sessions.  It’s not right waking up to Fergie screaming in your ear about being Fergalcious.  At least not at 2 in the morning. 

Normally, I would not be so inclined as to sit here several minutes until midnight to rant about (of all things!) a football game.  But as so that may be, I cannot get over this evenings loss to the San Diego Chargers.  Injuries, weather, and poor judgement aside, I have decided that Adam Vinateri is still on the Patriot’s payroll.  Unofficially, of course. 

I have to admit, I’m in the midst of a steamy, secret love affair that started about 3 weeks ago.  But first a little background…

I’ve always been an athletic (can you be athletic and uncoordinated that the same time?) kind of person, making sure to get my minimum minutes of aerobic activity each week.  About 3 years ago, I started having heart palpitations. 

Here. 

There. 

Anywhere. 

I can’t really pinpoint these palpitations to any certain cause, time of day, or activity, so after living the first year with them in a constant state of panic, thinking the next moment was going to be my very last, I’ve learned to (sort of) deal with them and am now at the point where I have only the occasional panic attack about the whole situation.   But they last anywhere from 10-30 seconds and just feels like my heart skips every other beat, then has extra beats as if it were trying to ‘catch up’.   The only other symptom that is semi-related is that when I’m sick with a cold or pregant I also get this really loud heart murmur (or so I’m told).  So ANYWAY.   These palpitations tend to be at their worst if I’m especially run-down from lack of sleep, if I push myself too hard while running, or if I’m drinking alcohol.  So about a month ago, I went out for a quick Sunday afternoon run.  I started out along my usual 3 mile course, but was feeling so great into it, that I extended it into my less-frequented 5 mile course.  About 8 pm that evening, I started getting the dreaded palpitations.  Evening is the worst time to get them, because by the time bedtime rolls around, I have myself convinced that I won’t be waking up the next morning.  It’s really so sad.  I’m giving the girls and my husband extra hugs and kisses before bed, telling them all kinds of things that sometimes I forget to mention.   

So the next day (I woke up, BTW) I end up ordering these Yoga DVDs (once again Amazon comes through for me).  I had just finished the book Eat, Pray, Love and was both inspired and intrigued by the author’s obsession with Yoga. The DVDs arrived shortly and I began my little journey. 

Until now, I have never in my life looked forward to any type of physical activity.  I enjoy how I feel afterward, but really I do it because I’m supposed to.  I don’t even need to.  I’m a comfortable 122 after two children, so really I have no complaints (other than these no longer perky breasts of mine).   I purchased the Lose Weight, Feel Great Kundalini Yoga dvd with Ravi Singh and Ana Brett.  After doing it the first time I thought,  “Wow.  How relaxing.  I got to lay on my back many, many times throughout the routine and ‘meditate’.”  So at the end of the program, I was sort of disappointed with it, thinking, ”How on earth would people lose weight with this silliness, spending half the time laying down?”

The next day I could not move.  I couldn’t raise my hands above my head and I had to keep yelling at anyone in my family who made me laugh because my ribs hurt so bad.  Now, who wudda thunk it? 

So now I’m hooked.  I have been doing this dvd every day for the last three weeks or so and just don’t get tired of it.  I don’t even stop getting being sore from it and I have these muscles in my back that I’ve never had before.  I have definition in my back.  I didn’t know I needed it, but boy do I like checking it out in the mirror!!

So, that is my love affair.  I literally sit here and fantasize about the moment I can put my daughter down for her nap just so I can go down into the basement and have my lusty, sweaty affair with Yoga. 

I’ve been so busy.  Having two kids, a dog, a husband, house, and attending school will do that to you.  You’re perpetually busy, yet you can’ t place your finger on exactly what it is you’ve been doing…

But I love my classes.  Each day that passes is one day closer to having my very own classroom! 

I understand that we shouldn’t live in the past.  Really I do.  Yet,  I often find myself mentally revisiting moments which have long since past, with such a sense of melancholic (is that a word?) urgency.  Why is that?  Is it a bizarre personality trait?  It’s like I have these really, really great memories that I just have this overwhelming urge to box up and hand to my children.  No…that didnt’ explain it correctly.  More like I want to find myself in that moment’s past and find the zipper in the memory so that I can open it just enough for my daughter to slip inside.  My current obsession is the Good News Camp.  At least I think this is what it was called.  It’s the only name that keeps popping into my head.  I have not seen this place for at least 20 years somewhere in the depths of Waynesboro, Pennsylvania.  At that time, it was a primitive little bible day camp, at which you arrived  and departed daily via bus.   My mind can literally walk through an entire day at camp with vivid remembrance.  We sat under the pine trees in front of an over-sized pond to eat our packed lunches, all the while, staring at the pond waiting for the clock’s permission to change into our swimsuits and either dive into the murky waters or bypass the pond for tubing in the creek.  Back in our dirty, dry clothes, we slurped down sticky snow-cones, oblivious to the evidence they were leaving on our faces and shirts.  Before the days end, we would all file into the cleared grove to perched upon the halved logs, which sat in rows.  It was here that the Choc-taws would compete against the Seminoles (each age group was named after a different Indian tribe–which I am so sure is politically incorrect today) in Jeopardy-fashion with all categories relating to some new knowledge the camp counselors hoped we had acquired. 

So, it all seems so very simple.  And it was.  Perhaps that is why memories such as these haunt me.  Maybe I prefer to be in a place of simplicity.  I want to wear the same clothes for days on end simply because what I’m wearing is irrelevant.  I want to sit in the center of an intertube, dangling my rear end into the freezing cold water as I drift lazily beneath dancing shadows of trees.  And it would be fabulous to eat a snow cone without my wet dishrag at the ready, prepared to wipe any stains before they set. 

So, we now live approximatey 2 hours from the town this little camp is in, and I’ve been seriously considering on how I can get my oldest daughter there for a week this summer.   I seriously cannot imagine growing up without having this experience to call you own.

There was also that Jewish camp I went to one summer…but that’s an entirely different blog in and of itself…