The King Mushroom (extended version...)

I pride myself on not being easily offended, but now I have been defamed on the Internet for all to see, and I will not put up with it!  My famous blogger brother Dan of Single Dad Laughing just posted about The King Mushroom, a story that lives in infamy in our sibling history.

The basic story is this:  My mom always added raisins and canned mushrooms to the spaghetti sauce.  Don't knock the raisins till you've tried 'em, people!  Dan is totally fronting that he didn't like that part -- we all gobbled up those little bits of sweetness.  But the mushrooms?  Oh, what we wouldn't do to escape the slippery, rubbery bites of death.  One night we discovered the most enormous canned mushroom in the history of the earth in the spaghetti sauce.  I'm pretty sure it was the size of my hand.  It may have covered the entire plate.

DANIEL is saying that I was the unlucky recipient of the flying-saucer-sized fungus, and that after my attempt to hide it on the floor under the table was discovered, I blamed him then gleefully watched as he was forced to eat it.

Lies, I tell you!

I know this, because I would never, ever have done such a thing.  I was the oldest, and therefore had a responsibility to set an example of perfect integrity and compassion for my younger siblings.  And I was perfect at it -- just ask me...

I'm pretty sure the original recipient of The King Mushroom was our poor little brother Eric, who at seven years old could hardly have been expected to eat a mushroom the size of his head.  He did chuck it on the floor, where it was in fact discovered by our parents.  Dan probably did get the blame, because he was definitely the pickiest eater.  You should have seen him gag pathetically when forced to eat peas.  But Dan, you missed the best part of the story!  When none of us would 'fess up to the crime, my parents decreed that no one would get to leave the table until that mushroom was eaten.  They didn't care who ate it as long as someone did.  So the four of us "big kids" sat at the table, long after our parents had left, eyeing each other and The King Mushroom.  Dan stabbed it with his fork and dropped it onto Eric's plate.  Eric picked it up and threw it at Dan, who picked it up and threw it at me.  Pretty soon we were laughing hysterically as we threw it back and forth at each other.  It may or may not have escalated into throwing other food items -- my memory gets fuzzy at that point.  But it did not go unnoticed by our parents, and the four of us spent some significant time with our noses on the wall that night.

But not all night -- that's a sibling story for another time...


P.S.  I mentioned this story to my mom the other night and she had zero recollection of these events.  I'm very interested to hear if Amy and Eric (our two younger siblings involved in this particular episode) remember this at all, and their versions of the events!

P.P.S.  Raisins in spaghetti sauce are delicious!  Just check out this yummy recipe for Sicilian spaghetti sauce:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Sicilian-Spaghetti-Sauce

On a lighter note... (Why does everything turn to tears?!)

Yesterday's post was a pretty heavy one in which a lot of crying happened.  One of my friends, as we were discussing it on FaceBook, said that she always ends up in tears, too, and wondered why that is.  Why is that our outlet?  Would it be healthier to scream into a pillow?!

Everything seems to turn to tears for me -- happy, sad, weddings, funerals, babies, public speaking, my son's pre-kindergarten evaluation.  Seriously, I stood out in the hallway with tears streaming down my face watching him count with his new teacher.  Me when I'm pregnant?  Crazy town.  I sobbed for about an hour when detective Bobby Simone on NYPD Blue died.  I cried for four hours when my dear sweet sister gave me a hideous haircut (that was my poor husband Dan's first introduction to crazy Tomi).  On the flipside, my family's favorite sport was to see who could get me laughing, because it would inevitably lead to me crying uncontrollably.  Yeah, glad I could entertain you guys...

You may have already seen this -- it's all over FB and the morning TV shows -- but Kristen Bell was on Ellen yesterday talking about her emotional meltdown over getting to interact with a sloth for her birthday (the fulfillment of a lifelong dream).  It's pretty darn hilarious:



Ah, another member of the crying club.  I love how she described her crying zone as anything outside 3-7 on the emotional scale.  I'm with you, Kristen.  (Except when I'm pregnant, which I would say is anything outside the 4-5 range.)

Crying is not a negative thing -- I think it's just one way to release emotional stress.  Dan (my husband) prefers to "criticize invisible liberals" while "yelling at the windshield like a moron" on his drive home.  That's his outlet.  Yelling always makes me feel worse instead of better, so that wouldn't work for me.  Some people have physical outlets (Dan also likes to lift a lot of weight at the gym when he's frustrated).  Some people have a hobby that lets them escape.  For me, that's arts and crafts and DIY projects.  Hmm, I haven't made a lot of time for that lately -- maybe that's a contributing factor to my recent trip into yuckville.

At any rate, I think we should give ourselves a break if we're criers.  It just means our hearts are full to overflowing, right?  Overflowing right out of our eyeballs.

P.S.
I also really love these two graphics I found via Pinterest.





(A very kind commenter named Gretchen also left that last thought in the comments yesterday.  Thank you!)

Bloodletting...

A couple of weeks ago I turned 33.  I have never been one to be bothered by getting older, but this one was a doozy.  For the first time in years, I felt terrible about myself, like I was going nowhere and just getting worse and worse as a person.  The one big area where I seemed to be offending humanity?  My weight.

I have always struggled with weight.  About five years ago I started making a real effort to get healthy and lose weight, and I lost about 70 lbs.  Yay!  Then I got pregnant and gained every single ounce back.  Boo.  Then over the following two years I got back down again.  Yay!  Then my sister revealed that she had been struggling with an eating disorder for ten years, and in supporting her through her treatment process I realized that my own obsession with my weight was not only harmful to her but to me and also potentially to my kids.  So I made a commitment to her and to myself that I would not weigh myself again and started working to reevaluate my goals for my health and life without being obsessed with the number on the scale, or tracking calories, or crushing myself with guilt about food choices.

It is a thousand times harder than I expected it to be.  Over the past year, though I don't know how much because I'm still committed to not weighing myself, I've slowly gotten bigger and bigger.  I'm still exercising and eating sensibly, but apparently if I don't obsess and restrict and go crazy, my body doesn't want to be that smaller size.  It is incredibly frustrating to feel the pounds come back on and have to buy bigger clothes.  I have paid a lot of lip service to not valuing myself by my weight, size, or physical appearance, but saying it is a heck of a lot easier than really believing it.

So back to my birthday.  For the last five years I've felt every year like I was making progress, going forward, getting more and more awesome.  But this year I just felt like crap.  And I was walking around for weeks beforehand with all these negative thoughts and feelings swirling around in my brain, feeding on themselves and growing bigger and bigger until it was all I could think about.  I couldn't see my many other great qualities, or the fact that my appearance is just one small part of my identity and life. It was a dark cloud from which I felt like there was no escape.

I started thinking about writing this post, but realized that I hadn't even talked about it to another human being.  And that maybe that would be helpful.  And that, just maybe, I should talk about it to my husband, who I know without a doubt loves me.  Duh.

So, the night after my birthday, I spilled my guts and cried on his shoulder (literally) for an hour.  And since I had been holding all this in pretty effectively, I'm sure it was kind of blindsiding for him.  And guess what: he didn't have any miraculous fixes for me.  He just let me talk it all out and tried to reassure me.

And when I woke up in the morning, I felt much better.  I don't mean to say that I was suddenly okay with everything about my body image and my self worth, but things were more proportionate with the rest of my life.  I was able to see that yes, I was unhappy with that one area, but I was also growing in many other areas of my life that I was very proud of.  I was able to stop obsessing -- instead of could see taking things one step, one choice at a time.  The dark cloud lifted.

While we were talking about it, my dear husband was sorry that he didn't have any answers for me.  He joked, "I could suggest leeches..." I replied, "Well, as a lover of the Jane Austen time period I should be all over those old-fashioned methods."  Which made me think of bloodletting (stick with me here), where doctors would open up a vein or artery and drain some blood out of a patient in the hopes of getting rid of the bad blood making them sick.  When I finally opened up and poured out all the poison that had been swirling around in my head and heart for so long, it worked just that way.  I let it all out and that allowed healthier thoughts to come in.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that keeping negative thoughts and feelings bottled up is only going to make them stronger until they poison everything in your life.  I am grateful to have a loving and understanding husband I could talk to and I really wish I had done it sooner.  For you it might be a husband, friend, mom, sister, or just a journal where you write everything down.  This blog post is helpful for me, too.  I kept it in because I didn't want to admit that I was struggling with the changes I've made.  I didn't want to burden anyone else with my negative emotions.  But the truth is, my husband knew I was unhappy about something.  My mom knew.  My kids knew, because by the time I finally let it out I was not a particularly cheerful person to be around.  So I wasn't fooling anyone anyway.

I realize that many people upon reading this would think, "Duh."  But for those who are like me, and have a difficult time talking about hard things, I hope this will empower you to open up your heart to someone you trust.

And now, for something funny...

Not from me, though -- I wanted to share with you a blog that I just stumbled upon. It's by a blogger named Serene, and the blog is titled "Serene is my name, Not my life!" She blogs about her imperfect parenting adventures and the posts I've read so far literally have tears running down my cheeks because I'm laughing so hard -- the situations are just so what we find ourselves in the middle of every day. I have officially wasted invested all my free time this morning into reading her posts and I can't wait to read more. My current fave is "A Man and His Business." If you're looking for a mommy blog that will help you shake off the "I have to be perfect at this" feeling for a little bit, check it out!

See past what it seems -- a must-read!

A Facebook friend posted a link to this blog post today with the comment "You will be really glad you read this." Boy, was she right. It's from the Brave Girls Club blog, called "We must see past what it seems," and it tells a very powerful story about how we judge the people around us and why we must be gentle with others.  Please take a few minutes to read it today -- I know I will be a little bit closer to my best self today because I did.  Have a blessed Sunday!

P.S. This is my first introduction to the Brave Girls Club, but I am excited to explore it more. It looks like a great resource for women trying to live an imperfect-but-beautiful life.  

Setting up roadblocks to intimacy...

I'm not talking about that kind of intimacy.  I'm talking about the kind where you open your self up, the very core of your being, to another person.  It's scary, because it's a very vulnerable position.  How much easier is it to put up a false front and keep others at a safe distance?  I recently saw this segment on our local lifestyle show and thought it was definitely worth sharing. Family therapist Julie Hanks talks about the things that prevent us from letting other "step in our shoes."

Or you can read the written article as well.  Just some food for thought!

Perfect is nice, but imperfect makes better memories...

The other night we had a joint birthday party for my little Eliza and my niece Amelia, who both just turned 3.  This is the first birthday they've really been old enough to "get" what was going on, and I wanted to make it big.  My sister Amy is an awesome cake decorator, and I asked her to please help me make a super fantastic girly cake, and she was with me all the way.

But, as so often happens, our plans got derailed.  With 40,000 other things happening, I didn't get the cakes made early enough to freeze (which would have made them much easier to decorate).  Then I was late getting to my mom's house to do the actual decorating.  Then, as my sister was hurrying over to teach me how to do the decorating, her tire blew out and she was stranded.  My brother went to rescue her, and by the time she got to the house there was almost no time left before the party was meant to start.  I said, "Maybe we should just forget the cake.  There's no way we can do it in time."  I was thinking we could just cover it with canned frosting and call it good, or steal the cupcakes my mom had bought for another occasion.  But Amy was adamant -- the cute girly cake was going to happen!  Moving at lightning speed, she leveled cakes, rolled out fondant, and did a bunch of other stuff that I didn't even see because I was trying to put up balloons and streamers.  I have never seen someone work so hard, so fast.

She was apologetic about the final product -- it was lumpy and bumpy and did not have the perfect finish that her other cakes have had.  But the little girls loved it.  I loved it.  Everyone at the party loved it.  It was really the centerpiece of the whole party!  

Do you think they're excited about the cake?

As I thought about it later, I realized how much more memorable that cake is now.  If everything had gone according to plan and we had come up with a perfect cake, when we looked at the pictures of the party in the future we would have said, "Oh, there's the cute cake Mom and Amy made."  Instead, we have this crazy cake that every time I see it, it will remind me of that crazy day and how much my sister loves me and Eliza and Amelia, and how hard we all worked to make that party a fun one for our little people.  It reminds me that my sister is willing to drop everything and do anything for me and my family.  It reminds me how much I love her.  It might sound silly, but now that cake stands for something.  Kerry Vincent probably wouldn't give it high marks, but that's okay -- it's about so much more than the decoration now.