Go Marry an established man

 An Established man... 

UmI've had a rough go of life. The last few years the hardships of dysfunctional marriage sliced my life to bits. I stumbled because of it. A personal financial crisis and a pandemic have come, too. I claw my way back up, make a plan, work that plan, despite the problems created by lack of health, lack of finance and taking a virus head-on. And then when my mother sees me struggling, instead of helping, shouts, "just go find an established man and get married."

Feminist me says "what?!"

What did she mean? Did she mean quit attempts to finish school? Just let some "man" decide my future? What the hell?

What century are we in? Did I miss something? Is that why she was with my stepfather and seems willing to go back despite the years of abandonment? Does man money spend better? 

relationship ghosts

What's in the darkness,

when you open your eyes. 

I am breathing in water. 

Sands around my feet.

Pretend it is okay, again. 

bending over backward, 

hands touching the sky

few choices, the sand bury the hands

What does the voice speak in silence.

when you open your mouth.

Your silence drowns over my voice.

Smothered in their flames

Pretend it is okay, again. 

bending further, water boils 

fewer choices, flame melts sand

What to do when the ears bleed

from the fish in the ear. 

It burrows deeper. 

Its eggs are hatching.

Pretend its okay, hatchlings

Break in the bend

Glass shattered, never truly freed, 

burrow deeper hatchlings. 

I 

Feeling un-accomplished

Well welcome!

 It's Tuesday and I said I would write a blog and post the Vlog each week. So here I am. Cranky.

I think I have heartburn. My kids didn't want to be in the kitchen with me today because I was so full of stinky farts!!!

THE DAY PLANNED

I had a bunch of stuff I was planning or rather mulling over doing today. That would benefit my clients. But instead, I took a nap! Then did all the following to not work on 'Work'.  Wrote a landing page, signed up for affiliate marketing links, scrolled aimlessly at Facebook, created a LinkedIn Ad for myself, but not my clients, photoshopped a clip art so that the little girl would have black hair like me,
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made enough black bean stew for 2 weeks, re-applied my lipstick like 6 times, ate my kitten's weight in tortilla chips and guacamole.

Other Things I did

 Made this vlog post and wrote this weeks blog to compliment it, I also explored my next steps for Facebook Instant Articles set up- which is super technical, adding in Facebook Ad Network to the business blog, not this blog that will feed the Instant Articles, went to the grocery store because I was out of chicken breast and my kid wanted that instead of spaghetti and marinara sauce, checked the mail, checked my emails, opened the mail, sorted the mail, verified the Google My Business, I still don't know what that is! Played with the cat, watched the kids clean the kitchen, from a safe no fart zone, took a shower...I think, sat in front of my computer typed a bunch but feel like I got nowhere.

But You Did So Many Worthwhile Things!!!

AGH, this is the problem with ADHD. There are too many worthwhile things. All the things I did move me closer to one goal or another goal which is cool. Unfortunately, none of the things I did today move my client's projects closer to being finished. Which sucks! Agh, why couldn't I stick with the plan? Why didn't I just do the things that were actually on my list. The truth is we may never know, kinda like how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

THE AWAITED VLOG

Here is my very long Vlog for today. A lot of things happened in the last 7 days. Some were stressful, some are weird, others were downright uncomfortable. Believe it or not, most of them are not even mentioned in today's blog, the written portion.  My kitten is tired and he keeps chasing the cursor on my monitor as I type and while it is normally adorable, tonight I am finding it repulsive. 

View on Facebook:

View on YouTube: 

Mommy ADHD: Parenting a Sick Child

Hello! I know I wanted to do this vlog part every week. I think Tuesday is a good day for me. It seems like I can dedicate myself to updating this blog and the vlog on Tuesdays.
Unfortunately, last week was, well, full of life. Whatever, right? So there was no blog or vlog or really anything that looked like work.

I had the water heater fail last Thursday. Yes owning your own home is wonderful! I highly recommend everyone try homeownership. Anyway, I had no money and now other-half to come to my rescue. I admit to borrowing money from both my Mom and Dad that I had no way to repay. It is a humbling experience to ask for a "loan" you have no way to pay back. I have no "income" at the moment and I have used most of my savings over the last year as I stayed home to recover from a heart attack. I am busting my butt in all directions trying to get everything in order to take on marketing clients on my own and end my relationship with the previous Digital Agency that I was a partner in. Borrowing $1,040.00 was yucky.

On Monday of last week my business with the previous partners officially dissolved and we started the resolution process of assigning accounts and notifying clients of the changes. Fun, but not a lot of action was taken by me or the business partners, so it is still sorta unresolved and just taking up space in my mind. 

Monday I attended the Goodyear Business Alliance hosted by Networking360. To be clear this is not a networking event, but a group of other business owners at different stages in their business who come to share and learn from each other. I love it. It has really kept me motivated to keep taking steps to build the business. I also had an impromptu meeting with a potential client in need of website development.  So it was a good day and things were looking good, even if I had no hot water and needed to shower at my mothers.  

Tuesday the plumber came. It took all day. Originally I had no issue with that. But about 4:30 pm the kid that had vomited and missed school became especially cranky and needy. I just didn't have the ability to wait for the plumber and make a trip to urgent care. So I called for reinforcements and his Dad showed up and took him to urgent care for me. They discovered he had the Flu!  

Luckily, the flu was caught early and he had Tamiflu to help reduce the duration of the flu. Better still he had been given the flu shot and so had my entire household. I can attest that no other member of the family has shared in his flu experience. Which is good because I am a heart attack survivor and I need to avoid getting the flu myself.

Anti-Immunization people probably don't want to hear more about my PRO-Immunization stance, but you should get your flu shots! They help prevent the spread of the flu. Tamiflu is only good if you get a flu diagnosis in the first 48 hours, and most people don't get the diagnosis until the 3rd or 4th day. Getting the flu shot reduces the chance of getting one of the strains in the flu vaccine by up to 70%, which I think is great! Get your shots! Protect others from the spread of preventable disease.

Having a sick kid led to me sitting on the couch for 4 days! I didn't do much of anything. Not this blog, vlog or working on my business. I don't know if that is normal behavior for other parents. Is it? Do most people just tend to the ill child and ignore the rest of the world and responsibilities? I am open to learning from your experiences.  Let me know. I am curious. Seriously! Am I alone? Is this an ADHD thing? Or just a parent thing? Do parents with partners do this too? Just Moms? Just Single parents? I really don't know. Nobody shares the ugly of life. 

Overcoming Fears starting a Vlog

Obviously, this is a blog. It is a place I write some thoughts that I would otherwise keep to myself. I'd probably explode if I kept all this to myself, so I write.

As part of my commitment to self-care and well, sanity, I thought I would work on building my writings and start something new, possibly fun. I have a few friends that have vlogs. They really love making content and one even encouraged her daughter to start her own channel. So here I am, taking a leap into video and well becoming a parent of a young YouTuber myself. I'll be talking to here tomorrow about how to manage a child on YouTube. Maybe she has words of advice.

While I have lots of things to say, the first video was a bit of a challenge. I'll talk later about how I regret that one Christmas gift the kids wanted in an upcoming video.

 But first, the video. This first attempt the lighting wasn't quite right. I guess when I set it up earlier in the day the camera really enjoyed all the bright lights. But come evening the camera wanted nothing to do with the bright lights. I adjusted. Then I didn't like how I looked. SO I put some make-up on. Then I got started. The first video was really nice, just wish I had recorded it. :)

Here is my first video. Nothing much yet. But how do you eat an elephant? Well, one bite at a time of course. --->https://youtu.be/X5WEqhJjXo8

We Believe: The Best Men Can Be

I am a mom. A woman. I have 3 young boys. One day they will be men. This week the internet and television exploded after Gillette published a short film asking men if this is the best men can be. I've watched this advertisement-film many times.

If you somehow have failed to view this 1-minute-and-50-second film,  titled "We Believe: The Best Men can Be,  I suggest you view it to judge for yourself.

Image from Gillette short film - We Believe: The Best Men Can Be

This film is about men and their responsibility for their role in our society. Society is made of men, women, and people who are non-conforming to the binary genders. In society, all people have responsibilities to improve the lives of each other, themselves and the future generations which is not worthy of protest. This film shows us the worst side of the typical man in America. If you are a woman or non-conforming person, this is sadly what dominates the interaction with "men". Men are at the top of the pyramid in our society.

The film starts out with a middle-aged man staring at himself in the mirror.  He is the proverbial man in the mirror, Micheal Jackson sang about. You hear the newscaster shout "Bullying" which is common in our schools and workplaces. Just take a look at these tales of bullying at schools and this racial bullying example from GM manufacturing plant against black workers..

Then the newscaster says, 'The #metoo movement", and yes, yes, many men, even the majority of 'men' scoffed at the #metoo movement as some crazy liberal feminist nonsense, but it is an outcry for women and men to tell the survior stories of sexual misconduct that has gone unacknowledged and were often hidden.

Then a narrator asks "is this the best a man can be?". Example after example of 'men' behaving poorly blazes across the screen, bullying, sexual harassment, mansplaining, looking the other way, allowing physical boundaries to be crossed, chanting "boys will be boys", as otherwise good 'men' take steps to stand up for what is right.

At 53 seconds as Terry Crews says "Men need to hold other Men accountable". Right there is where men who don't represent the best of men get angry.  Is it because they find in themselves that they are the ones telling "women to smile'? Are they angry because it is not appropriate to follow a woman as she goes about her daily business and cat-call her? Are they the Harvey Wienstiens of the world? Are they the 'grab them by the pussy' type of guy talk and do they find being told this behavior is NOT very appealing to either men or women? Are they the men telling the next generation to Man up and not be a pussy? Did this short film cause them to look in the mirror and see a reflection they didn't like?

As a mother, it is my responsibility to teach my 3 boys to be better than their father. It's probably his responsibility too, unfortunately, he has allowed all the bravado of the US Marine Corp and its toxic masculinity to become less than the best of men. I've never subscribed to the 'boys will be boys' mentality and at times have argued loudly with my own mother for saying that to me about my former husband and to my boys in regards to their behavior. Men are not awful and they don't need to be harmful to other men or women around them to show their masculinity. Boys will be exactly the type of men we teach them to be. We want our men to be masculine, to stand up against the wrongs in this world for those that don't have a voice. We want our men to be honorable the way a Boy Scout instills trustworthiness in strangers. We want our men to know they are the one man that has the power to change this world. They are the men that can be the best.

This short film-commercial is not a video decrying men as the awful, horrid beasts. This short film is a reminder that Gillette believes in the Best Men Can be. If this short film-commercial makes you buy more razors from Gillette, then it is doing its job. If this short film-commercial makes the men around you stand up for what is good about men then it has done its job. If this short film-commercial makes you angry as a man who wants to condemn Gillette and buy another brand, then maybe you should ask yourself what about this commercial angers you...

Happy 2019!

Happy 2019!

I've had it with 2018! It was painful in so many ways.  First, it started with the recovery from a heart attack, well 2, and unemployment as a result. Though I did have a 'side-hustle'. Recovery from a heart attack is about 30% physical and 70% mental. I've heard of people who had no choice but to return to full-time employment just days or weeks after a myocardial infarction or heart attack and I see that after that they don't "recover". They stay in survival mode and typically get sicker and sicker as the years go by. In large part, because they didn't have time to reflect on what went so wrong and how to fix the damage that had been done. Like I said its 70% mental.

My recovery has been difficult. I did not do well on a medication called atorvastatin. I thought my ADHD was getting worse or that I was just stressed out from the incident. But when I couldn't carry on a conversation or remember the sentence I had just read, I complained. I wasn't listened too. When I was I couldn't remember what the instructions were. Hahaha. It was terrible. Eventually, I had leg pain, this burning, tingling, needling sensation that would not stop. It got to the point where walking from the bed to the bathroom was an endurance event. When I reported that symptom the cardiologist immediately took me off the atorvastatin and wanted me to take another similar 'statin' medication. I refused. He's really not happy about that. Neither is my Family Doctor. But Life needs to be enjoyable not just "longer" as he claims. Though the scientific studies show it only extends the life of a heart attack survivor by 5 days. I'd like those days to be pain-free. 

In addition, I had my Mother living with me for all of 2018. I don't know if you realize this but mothers and daughters should not live together as adults. It is awful. It is confusing. It is not something I recommend to anyone that can avoid it. While I love my Mom, I never want to live with her in the room next door to me, at least not for as long as she is working her bizarre 2am - 11am+ schedule. She requires absolute silence! I have 3 kids, 2 dogs, and 4 cats. Silence isn't something we are capable of delivering. Some days she would get home shortly after 11am and I would be required to "be QUIET" so she could nap. That meant my 'side-hustle' could not be done because I "talk too loud" according to my mother. It also meant things like dishes couldn't be done because the clanging of the dishes was too loud as was the dishwasher. No yard work, not that I really wanted too, but it was out. All the organizing and hanging up of pictures or moving furniture so you could de-clutter the house was also out. I may have ADHD but I HATE clutter. Agh. It was everywhere. Maybe a touch OCD about the clutter. Everything must have a home in my home or I throw it out. Kids hate that. :)

I know what you're thinking...why just not do all the things before she returns home? Well, the woman never communicated what time she would be home. And when she was home she would stuff herself into her 'bedroom' lock the door and turn the TV on to CNN. She called that napping. But I was required to keep the place quiet until the kids went to sleep because shortly after her 'nap' was her 'bedtime'. Do you know how difficult it is to keep silent while cooking dinner?

Just to make things more inconvenient the Washer and Dryer were located in her room. But as all children know you can't go into your parents' room. So I couldn't wash clothing at will. I had to wait for her to do it, then listen to her complain about it. Now I had an answer, we could go explore the front closet in the living room where the previous owner claimed the original laundry room was. But I couldn't do it because if I got caught doing something 'difficult' like removing a false wall panel and testing the outlet and water supply there would be lots of words from her on how I needed to take it easy because I had had a heart attack and she didn't want me to die. Yea guilt trip. So she did the laundry, then complained about doing it, but complained more if I went into her room to do the laundry before she came home.

So now she is gone from the house. And I need to find a way to quickly cover the expense of the mortgage. SO her absence is both a blessing and a bit of a challenge. My side hustle with my partners is in shambles. That's a story for another day, maybe another or two I have. Anyway's I am making my own side hustle. I am going to restart my old business Binary Digital Media. I am working on the business plan so stay tuned for what that turns into. Maybe websites, maybe websites and social media, who knows. I've got until the weekend to figure that out and update my old website http://www.binarydigitalmedia.com. I have a potential website client, that was referred to me by a friend so I may have a few hundred dollars coming in this month. I have to work on the household budget too, see what I can do to make it all work in 2019.

Glad to leave all that crazy in 2018 and tidying the house after my mom left was a nice stress reliever.