BloggingDangerously

Pass It On...

I had to go to New York on Wednesday.  I got up at 5:30.

Ok, I was SUPPOSED to get up at 5:30 but I snoozed until 6 - which was a mistake.

I jumped into the shower, jumped out, got dressed, forgot to put on my eyeshadow and then tiptoed into the kids rooms to say goodbye.

I jumped into my car and hit the highway.

And then it hit me back.

Apparently at 6:45am the highways in Massachusetts slow to a crawl.  That's okay though, my train wasn't until 7:30.

At 7:15 I was still crawling along and the new turn-by-turn navigation feature on my iphone was telling me I would DEFINITELY be at the train station by 7:45 - which was CLEARLY not going to work.

I called Delta from my car and made a reservation on the 9am shuttle.  I made it with plenty of time to spare, got a front row parking spot and got upgraded to first class.

I landed at Laguardia, walked out to a line of cabs a mile long waiting to take me to Manhattan and arrived at 11am for my noon lunch.

I popped into Duane Reade (think Walgreen's) but with a Macy's makeup counter and the lovely Michelle offered to do my colors and touch up my bare eyes.

We hung out for a half hour and she helped me find some great colors and gave me a bunch of trial sized samples.  I bought a bunch of stuff and headed over to the restaurant.  

Lunch was fabulous and my meeting with my customer was comfortable and easy - where sometimes it can feel a little forced.

I walked him back to his office but we stopped to get coffee and I bought cookies for my next meeting.

When I said goodbye to him I turned to walk down the street and bumped right into another client I was hoping to talk to.  We had a FANTASTIC curbside conversation and he told me some things that I'd been hoping to hear for several months.

I walked away from him happy as could be.

I walked back to my office and bumped into a coworker I hadn't seen a while.  We made plans to meet for lunch next week.  I had to run to my next appointment.

As I walked there it sprinkled but didn't rain.  I got there right on time and had a great meeting.

When I left I walked over to the Marriott Times Square and got in the taxi line.  There were two bellhops there but I wasn't sure how they'd react.  Sometimes they can be difficult about getting cabs for people who are not guests of the hotel but I put on a smile and said, "HI!  How are you? Are you having a good day?" and the first bellhop said, "I don't know. I just started."

So I said to him, "Well I am having a GREAT day, so here, shake my hand and maybe some of my karma will rub off on you."  I stuck out my hand so that he could shake it.

He FROZE and looked at me and said, "Now THAT is something that most people don't know!"

And the other bellhop said, "AMEN."

And the first bellhop went on, "If you share it, you get back EVEN more, but most people, they keep it close to them and they waste it."

 Y'all it is HARD to get a cab to JFK at 4pm in NYC but those guys, they found me one.  And I shook both their hands and told them that I hoped they had a great night.  And I gave them a great tip.

The cab driver took the Van Wyck - which can be a nightmare - but we flew.  

I got home in time to tuck my kids into bed and then caught up on all the work I'd missed traipsing around NYC.

It was a GREAT day.  But you know what? I could have focused on the bad parts - getting up late, traffic, missing my train, forgetting my makeup, getting rained on, etc.  I could have been rude to the bellhops and had them be rude to me.

It's a choice.  You can choose to focus on the bad things, you can choose to focus on the positive things and you can share EITHER of those things with others.

How do you want to feel?  And who do you want to be?

 

The Luckiest Mom

I yell at my kids more than I'd like.  Sometimes it's because there are 4 of them and the volume is so high at my house it's the only way to get my airwaves past the ones that they are making and sometimes it's because there are times when they seem to ignore me until I start yelling.

Sometimes when I'm lying in bed falling asleep I say to myself, "good day today - no yelling!"  or "I will try to be more patient tomorrow."

Lately, in an effort to combat the bad yelling I've started trying to work in some good yelling.  One of my favorites is to walk up to one of my kids, squeeze them tight and then yell into their faces, "I AM THE LUCKIEST MOM!"

They laugh because they know I am also the craziest.

Speaking of crazy, I wrote about this before but I've also been trying to redirect us all when things are going poorly.  One of my favorites happens consistently at bedtime when my children seem to have a hard time with "brush your teeth and go to bed" and I find them wandering the halls half naked or soaking wet or playing with Legos.  

At this time I try to offer them direction but after the third or fourth time I look them in the eye and half scream/half sing (in a showtunes sort of way) You're driving me, driving me, driving me.... CRAZY!"

I've done it so much it's now one of the girls favorite songs and they fill in the CRAZY now before I even get to it.  It may make us appear crazier but it helps keep me sane and less screamy so it's a win.

But the best thing happened the other day when I squeezed my 5 year old tight then put my nose up to hers and said loudly, "I AM THE LUCKIEST MOM."

After I said, "I" she interrupted and timed "I LOVE YOU MOM" to coincide with my saying "I AM THE LUCKIEST MOM" so that our "MOM"s overlapped and then she laughed and said, "Jinx, you owe me a coke."

And then we laughed and laughed.

 

Like Mother Like Daughter

I met my husband while I was flirting with a guy I'll call Creepy Tommy.  Creepy Tommy is creepy for a whole lot of reasons but at the time all I knew is that he was GORGEOUS.  Like gorgeous in a way that puts the whole world on pause and all you can hear are angels singing.  Seriously.

(You can read the whole story about how we met here.)

The kids ask ALL THE TIME how we met and when we tell them, it always starts with Creepy Tommy and how stunningly gorgeous he was.

So the other day, when we were at the soccer field and my 7yo walked up to me and asked, "Mommy is that Creepy Tommy?" I was totally caught off guard.  I mean there is NO reason that Creepy Tommy would be at our soccer field but I looked anyway because - AWKWARD.

"Where?" I asked.  She pointed.  I looked.

I breathed.

"No." I told her. "That's (your friends) the twins dad."

She nodded and walked away.

I wondered why she thought it was Creepy Tommy... I mean she had never even met him.  She didn't even know anything about him except...

I whirled on her, "Wait a sec," I said laughing, "Did you think that was Creepy Tommy because the only thing you know about him is how handsome he is and you think that guy is SUPER handsome?"

She blushed and walked away.

I looked back.

She was right.  The man was TOTALLY hot.

Fallback Plan

Saturday morning I coached an 8am soccer game and a 9am soccer game for my daughters while my husband coached a 9am football game for my sons.  After the 9 o'clock game my daughters and I raced back to the football field to see the last play of the football game.  Then my in-laws - who had come up for the game - came back to my house and I made bolognese sauce and lasagna.  

I took the kids out to ride their bikes (my 5yo is THISCLOSE to riding by herself) and cleaned out all of the too-small clothes from the kids' drawers and helped them put away about 6 loads of laundry.

It was a LONG day.

At 6am when my husband was trying to get me out of bed he started whispering sweet nothings in my ear.  He was just doing it to get me aroused and awake but it totally backfired when I whispered my own sweet nothings back.

He looked at me and his eyes dilated as all of the blood left his head.  I'm pretty sure he giggled.  "Okay" he said.

"Go away." I told him snuggling back into the bed.

"TONIGHT." he promised.

Well, after our early wakeup call and the day we had, there wasn't much energy left by bedtime to fulfill any commitments.  

But neither of us wanted to completely pull the plug.

"I don't think I can - but I want to." I told him.

"That's okay, we don't have to." he said, kissing me.

Before long, one thing led to another and while neither of us made good on the promises we'd made that morning, we managed to essentially achieve the same goal.

The situation doesn't have to be perfect, you can be too tired, too busy, too whatever, you just have to give yourself 5 minutes (according to World of Psychology) and a willingness to compromise and you're there.

And the ironic twist to this post is that I just turned my husband down to finish this post.

 

 

 

Is This From The Blues Brothers?

My friend from yesterday texted me today:

"I have decided I can't hang with the younger sales teams."

Me: When did you decide that?

Him: After trying to remove the socks from my teeth.

Me: Alcohol is like that old girlfriend you remember fondly because you blocked out the times she tried to kill you.