Advice To My Pregnant Daughter

Yes, another grandchild is on the horizon.  If you're keeping count that would be THREE grandbabies!  This arrival will be a first for my daughter.

There is so much to say and so many questions to answer.  Of course I am instantly brought back to my first pregnancy.  26 years ago today I was eight months along and done being pregnant.  If the icky pukey morning sickness stage is miserable, just wait, seven/plus pounds of wiggly fetus pressing on your bladder, colon, stomach, kidneys, rib cage, lungs and whatever else that stinker can stretch out and reach will make you wish you were hugging a toilet, hacking up a handful of crackers.

For however gross and uncomfortable it all is and will be, it is totally worth it.  This is a unique journey not afforded everyone.  And your first time?  Truly magical.  This is the time you can truly appreciate what miracles your body can produce.  There is an actual PERSON growing in there.  I remember rubbing the nearly non-existent bump and humming songs.  If you love music I'm sure it's because how much exposure you had before you took your first breath.  Unlike my next two pregnancies, when I had oooohhh YOU running amuck, I could focus completely on the changes my body was making as you grew.  I found it fascinating and I hope you do too.

So, for my actual advice:

Take time to journal your experience.  This baby will not allow you the peace and quiet necessary to gather your thoughts during future pregnancies.

Sleep.  I'm pretty sure I taught you the value of sleep, but let me remind you.  It is as vital to your health and sanity as eating healthy.  Take naps often.  This is good training for after baby arrives that you let the dirty dishes sit so you can grab essential sleep.

Eat.  And eat right.  At the moment anything you can keep in your stomach is "right" but soon you'll be ready to rampage a buffet like a million teenage boys.  Keep yourself in check.  Milk, which includes cheese and milkshakes, are essential, but try to do so in moderate amounts.

Exercise.  I just could not master this one and am still paying the price.  Keep your body active, stretch regularly. 

DITCH ALL ADVICE BOOKS AND WEBSITES.  I quickly learned to disregard all of those helpful tips coming from every damn corner.  It's overwhelming, frequently counter-intuitive, and most of it does not apply to your situation.  Find a zen way to blow past it.  You only need to listen to your mother and your doctor :)  Actually, if you come across books like "What to Expect When You're Expecting" take them for the spirit they are intended, simply as a guide.  Seek advice for the clinical stuff and developmental stages, but all of the rest is just noise and treat it as such.

Building off that last one, avoid pregnancy/delivery war stories.  I've warned you about this one before and I'm sure you've already been subjected to horror stories.  Find a way to escape these conversations.  They are not helpful and could actually build unnecessary fear.

Fear.  It is natural.  I went through crazy bouts of paranoia and the nightmares were unreal.  They make sense if you think about it, your body is forcing you to protect this baby.  It is what makes you into a growling momma bear.  So hearing all of that other crap scaring you about delivery or your future baby's health is totally unneeded.  Your active imagination will fuel all of that without any help.  Find a grounded source to talk these things out - my ear is always available.

Take some time to consider your parenting style.  Think about what you did and did not like about your upbringing.  Be careful with the I-never's because that will bite you in the ass. 

God gives us nine months for a reason.  You may be ready to hold your little bundle right here and now, but the rest of us, especially daddy, need that time to absorb and prepare.  Be patient if he isn't quite on the same page.  Dads don't tend to accept the reality of a baby until they actually hold that pink, screaming child.  It is also during this time that your body trains you for waking up for a baby eating every two hours, adjusting your sense of smell so you can literally sense danger and identify your baby from all of the other ones in the nursery, and widening your hips so you can pass a watermelon.  It is all for a reason.  Ride the tide and appreciate it as literal steps in your development as a mother.

This baby is a blessing and my heart is simply bursting with pride and anticipation.

With all of my love,
Mom

Use Moisturizer

I think I was still in college when I saw on TV a woman who said the best advice she could give any young woman is to use moisturizer.  I'm not one to accept advice very well, but something clicked in my tiny head that maybe this was important.  Moisturizer has since been part of my morning routine.  It took a while to find the right product that didn't cause acne or feel too greasy.

Moisturizer on my face makes sense.  But my neck is starting to show a bit of age. Lotion hasn't necessarily made it beyond my chin every day.  And it shows.

Then I saw Sally Field on the Tonight Show promoting the new movie Lincoln (I cannot WAIT to see it and that was before Jay Leno said it should be an Oscar nominee).  Her face is still cutie patootie, but holy crap, her neck was a horrid collection of wrinkles.  And I hate talking about anyone like that, but damn. 

Ladies, don't forget your neck and hell, probably the cleavage too!

My Week Without Power

Way back in 2006 a huge storm blew through St. Louis.  I was attending a PartyLite conference at the dome downtown and remember walking onto the concourse, hearing the tornado sirens and seeing the green sky through the window.  And the WIND.  We were three stories up and the debris was blowing past at eye level.

What I was witnessing, I found out later, was "straight line winds" not a tornado.  Trees and branches had dropped all over town and power was out.

There was little surprise driving home with so many of the street lights and signals out that my own power wouldn't be working.  And as with any power outage I pulled out the candles and hunkered down for the night.  My kids were with their dad that Thursday night and his power was also out.  In fact everyone's power was out.  When I arrived to work the next morning my office was up and running and the conversation centered on that weird storm the night before and how wide spread the outages were.  I returned home with my power still out.  That had officially been the longest I have ever gone without electricity.

This was at the end of July and the heat was increasing.  The kids returned home so we sought refuge at my mom's house for the evening - this wasn't a full scale blackout, merely large pockets of outages.  We went home the next day with promises to return if the heat was too much.

My power did not come back on until the following Friday.  EIGHT DAYS.

We never went back to my mom's house, but we did have to change our routine and we survived (obviously).

Let's be clear, I am not a prepared person.  I do not, and did not, have huge stores of supplies for doomsday circumstances.  Well, today I have what equates to a miniature grocery store in my basement, but it wouldn't have been helpful in this situation.

The first thing that came out were my candles.  Having been a PartyLite representative for five years I have plenty of wax on hand, even today.  After my traumatic experience of no power for EIGHT DAYS I will forever have candles at my disposal.  My tale of woe was woven into my candle demonstrations from then on out.  I had enough candlelight to be the most illuminated  house on the street - you could see us blocks away!  I rigged a three wick monstrosity next to the couch so I could comfortably read - seriously, it was bright enough.

I knew not to muck with the refrigerator.  Leave it closed, it would be fine for a day.  And it was.  As it became clear I was exceeding the 12 hour limit of safety I bought a bag of ice to cram into the freezer.  That saved me more time.  On my way home Saturday morning I bought two more bags of ice figuring I would continue tossing them into the fridge and freezer.  When I got home it was clear I would need a ton of ice for that procedure to work properly and knew I had to move everything into a smaller device.   I had two coolers that had served me well the previous year when I toted my spawn across the country for a ten day journey of travel, camping and sightseeing.  Milk and all of the perishables were carefully packed into the coolers covered with plenty of ice.

Every morning I would drive to the grocery store and buy two bags of ice.  The store almost walking distance from my house was impacted by the power outage so I had to drive a few miles away and back.  I would drain the excess water from the coolers and cram as much ice as would fit.  It was funny how this became my new routine, me the non-morning person running to the store.

Just about everything was stashed in Ziplock bags before hitting the cooler.  I rarely make specific brand recommendations but I've learned that nobody makes a zipper bag like Ziplock.  They seal completely and are not prone to pin holes along the seams.  Even items that don't look like they will take on water should still be put in plastic bags.  There's nothing worse that hotdog flavored butter.  And in this instance I wanted to keep the melted ice water as pristine as possible in case we had issues with water purity, rumors were already circulating.  In that burst of brilliance I made sure to clean out my coolers with bleach water before storing food in them.

My house was not completely electric.  We had gas to our stove and hot water heater.  While the electric spark on the stove was inoperable I could still use a match to light it.  I opted not to heat up the house any further by cooking on the stovetop other than to boil water or small food preparation.  Instead I lit up the grill in the backyard.  The kids gathered small branches since there were plenty after that storm and I didn't exhaust my charcoal supply.  We didn't have much to be rescued from the freezer and what was there was promptly cooked and eaten.

It's been a few years and my memory is crap, but I think maybe my kids spent time with other family members.  I don't remember incessant whining about boredom.  Detoxing from the TV was refreshing and I caught up on my reading.  I spent a lot of time sitting outdoors in the shade because the house was pretty freaking hot.  At night I slept with a wet towel to keep cool.  I now pay attention to window placement in houses.  This particular house was not built with airflow in mind.

Overall, it was not a completely negative experience.  I felt proud for being resourceful enough to rise to the challenge.  Little did I know that in six months I would have to repeat my resourcefulness for another extended power outage, this time during an ice storm.

My husband hates the potential harm from gas lines and fireplaces, but my experience has made both very necessary.  The fireplace was the only way to keep warm during the ice storm.  I had pet birds at the time so I crammed their cages as close to the fireplace as possible and draped heavy blankets over them.  This time I do remember the kids were not home as I recall sleeping on the couch in front of the fire.  Fortunately my power was back on in 48 hours.  I had already kicked into my previous routine of running to the grocery store for ice (kind of ironic with an ice storm, huh?) and cooking the contents of the freezer.

I think of these experiences as I hear of others facing long term outages.  It is possible for an unprepared person to survive.

If ever you were to give something valuable to a young adult moving out on their own let it be an emergency kit:
   • Candles
   • Lighters (more than one!)
   • Manual can opener
   • Ziplock bags
   • Cooler
   • Gallon of water
And if you were really generous, pack it with non-perishable food.

Leap of Faith

Have you ever taken a leap of faith? 

I've had several conversations recently about faith and giant leaps.  What the people around me today don't know is that I've taken those leaps - plural, more than once.  It isn't a wild abandon, devil-may-care attitude.  I know those people, that's not me and that isn't a leap of faith.

And a leap of faith isn't always taken when your back is up against the wall, although The Powers That Be sometimes have to take you to the edge of the cliff to get you finally take that leap.  No, leaps of faith can be taken before the cavalry chases you across the desert to the edge of a deep canyon.  Leaps of faith are part of those crazy jumps the good guy makes as he runs across the rooftops when he saves the world, each step even and calculated without a safety net because he knows and trusts he can make it across.

Trust.

No safety net.

No security blanket.

It's when your marriage has come to the end and it's time to leave before anyone gets hurt.  It's turning over your body to the doctor for surgery.  Or having a baby.  It's quitting your job without having another one lined up.  Or going to an audition.  It's introducing yourself to a stranger.

To get through it, you have to believe you're coming out on the other side.  Everything WILL be okay.  No one will guarantee you won't get a little banged up along the way or have a few battle scars when it's all said and done, but you will survive.  Also no one can guarantee what things will be like after the leap, but you have to believe you will be okay.  Everything always works out for the best.

This may all sound like New Age mumbo jumbo, but I can tell you from personal experience that faith - faith in God, faith in yourself, faith you're headed in the right direction - ALWAYS pays off.  Always.  Safety nets and back-up plans may come from experience, but they also show a lack of faith.

Tips From A Camera Owner

Let's get something straight, I do not consider myself a photographer of any level (beginner, amateur, hobbiest...).  I just happen to be a girl with a camera.  So if you are a photographer, the advice I'm about to offer is probably beneath you, but please feel free to chime in - I might learn something.

1.  Read the directions.  And in true QandleQueen fashion, I have already broken the rules starting with the first one.  I abhor directions.  And camera directions are littered with mumbo jumbo that I won't bother learning.  They are written by photographers for photographers, not us little people who need to know the difference between the various settings.  I have recently educated myself about "aperature" and something with a name that escapes me about refocusing so background lights become dots.  Okay, maybe I'm a "beginner" photographer.  That said, everyone insists it's really important to read the directions that come with your camera, so there, I said it.

2.  TAKE YOUR CAMERA WITH YOU.  I cannot tell you how many times I whip out my little pocket camera and people around me sigh with relief that someone is going to capture the day's events.  I used to travel quite a bit and every so often I would see a tree (like I posted yesterday, I have a thing for trees) and think, wow, if only I had a camera with me...  Two years ago we bought a pocket camera and that puppy LIVES in my purse.  Of course there are times I forget to pull it out and miss a great moment.

3.  Take a lot of pictures.  Gone are the days where you waste film on crappy shots.  I take oooooodles of crappy shots.  Sheer volume will produce an accidental great shot.  Take those pictures.  Who cares if you chop off heads or have shaky hands.  Take them.

Speaking of chopping off heads, this one pisses me off, well... now I find it funny.  I'm on the right in the pink coat and in the fur, Geraldine Ferraro.  My photographer didn't even manage to capture us shaking hands!  GAH!

Had she kept clicking she might have accidentally got our faces!

4.  Keep your crappy shots.  Okay, maybe not all of them.  But at least some.  Please.  The historian/genealogist in me thanks you.

This picture isn't posed well, is out of focus and overall not really worthy of keeping.  But my great-grandmother held onto it just the same.  Actually most of her pictures are off-center and fuzzy, but they're all I have and I am very grateful.  This is my grandmother and her younger sister.  Isn't this absolutely PRECIOUS?  Besides capturing the sisters, it also caught the house where they grew up.  Now I can go back to the small town where she grew up and find that house.  A few years ago Grandma led us to a house she said was her grandparent's home.  I took a picture of it thinking it would match the house in this shot, but it does not.  Oh well.

5.  Play with the settings.  Maybe if you understand the photographer mumbu jumbo in the directions you won't need to "play" with the settings.  Me?  I have to tinker.  I mean, really, what's going to happen?  It's not like the camera is going to blow up...

Aw crap, let me go off on a tangent.  PLAY with all of your electronics.  Seriously, unless you physically force the parts to move in a direction they're not meant to move or you drop it, YOU CANNOT BREAK THE DAMN THING.  Turn the dials (don't force them), push the buttons, see what happens when you click this and try that.  People are so freaking SCARED of their electronics, afraid they'll make a mistake.  You know what?  WHO CARES.  Get over your bad self and give it a try.  You have MY permission.  Quit waiting for the experts.  Do you know HOW they became experts?  They got past that fear of screwing up.  This applies to cooking, computers, car radios, DVR, and photography.  TRY IT, YOU MIGHT LIKE IT.

Please, PLAY with your camera.

Now I am guilty of leaving my camera on one particular setting and about 90% of my shots are taken with that one singular setting.  In fact, I leave it on that setting so much that I fail to check if it got jostled in my purse and occasionally I end up using the record or panorama settings.  Ooops.

So here's one we've all had

The blurry night shot.  Actually I kept this one because I like the swirls (See?  Rule #4 keep some of your crappy shots).  The problem is that the lighting is so poor that the shutter stayed open too long.  Damn, I'm sounding like a photographer.  Sorry.

So I dicked around with the settings.  There is a "nighttime" setting, but it wasn't working for me.  Then, on a lark, I discovered a "candlelight" setting.  And THIS is what I got:

Huge improvement, huh?

So I tucked that in my memory and a few weeks later I used it again!

My grandson's Baptism was another low light event and no matter how much I fiddle with the focus, it just wasn't going to come out clear.

I flipped it over to the "candlelight" setting and got a couple of clear shots.  Before you get too excited about the quality of this picture, let me move onto the next piece of advice...

6.  Learn how to adjust the quality of pictures after you download them.  If you have a Mac I can give you all sorts of advice how to achieve this using the application "Preview" that comes already loaded on your computer.  I'm not sure what applications are available to Windows users.  Again, screw around with settings.  All of the professional photographer sites insist that you tweek your pictures.  I'm not super confident in this endeavor, but as always I'm willing to try.  The key to not screwing up a good picture is to duplicate the document and play on a copy.

So there you go, six easy steps to become a mediocre photographer.

Teenagers

The third time is not necessarily the charm, let me just say.

On the upside, because I've already survived two teenagers I'm not too surprised by number three nor do I ponder his motives.

They really are fascinating creatures and if given a choice of age groups to work with, I would choose a teenager every time.  (By the way, the teenager in question just tossed three bags of M&M's at me, one beaning me in the forehead causing him to double over in laughter - teen angst my ass).

The deal with teenagers is that they are trying so damn hard to be an adult.  The problem is the harder they try, the more they come off as immature imbeciles.  They see adults as crusty, hardened, boring people with loaded wallets and the freedom to come and go and say as we please.  So clearly the boring demeanor goes hand in hand with the freewheeling lifestyle.  Or something like that.  And really, when you consider what they see when looking at adults are parents and teachers which are boring life roles and our conversation only gets animated when we discuss taxes, the most boring of all possible subjects in all of human existence.  So yes, we are, in fact, boring people with awesome potential.  And we are wasting all of our money and time on boring shit.  Therefore, every adult is a fucking idiot.

Since every adult is an idiot, we deserve the angst, the eye rolls and the many, many deep sighs of indignation.  As soon as this wee teenager gets to be an adult he's going to show us how it's done - right.

mmhmmmmm.....

I remember my teen years.  I had the incredible fortune of being in a fantastic youth group.  There were a multitude of lessons to be learned, but the one I realized almost immediately was that I got to see adults outside of their authoritative, and thus boring, roles.  In other words, I got to see them as people.  I saw them bicker, make up, act silly, get scared, rejoice, greive, screw up, fall down, lead, follow, whine...  I also saw that their interests and dislikes were really no different than us kids.  They revealed stories of their teenage years that frequently left us in awe, sometimes with envy, other times we related as the same thing happened just a few days before.

It left me with no delusions what adulthood was about - just more of the same.  That we are the same core people that we were at 10.  It allowed me to release this drive to be "mature" and just be myself - that silly, quirky, off-the-wall person that brewed deep inside my soul.  It was okay to still like cartoons and to dance to the radio in my bedroom.  It was okay to read books that caught my interest, not because it's what the cool kids read.

All of my children have been exposed to adults in their real state through youth groups and other behind-the-scenes opportunities.   That doesn't mean they were exempt from their angst-filled moments, but I feel like I've breezed through their teen years rather unscathed.  I actually liked my kids as teenagers.  The two adult-sized ones are pretty cool, but I miss the constant contact and interaction that we had just a few years ago.  Their little brother is filling the void nicely, of course I know that will last for only so long.

So the fussy face staring at me yesterday morning inspiring me to write, changed in a matter of hours.  Wait it out, it will pass, is probably the biggest lesson I've learned when dealing with teenagers.  Do not rise to the provocation, wait it out.  It's too hard to stay pissed off forever, eventually they will give in.

It's probably the biggest game of chicken around.

Parenting Advice

I'm in a bit of a pickle.  My son and his fiancee are expecting their first child in ELEVEN WEEKS.  Folks, grandmahood is barreling down on me (and in case you're aware of the calendar, my own birthday is TEN weeks away... it is sooooo very possible that grandbaby could pop out early and share Grandmama's birthday!  PS, "grandmama" is totally stolen from Bewitched - can you see me as Endora????)  I am soooooo excited but I also am in a bit of a quandary as to what sort of grandma I'm going to be, truly not wanting to be the super meddling Endora and Good Lord I do not plan to dress like her or wear her heavy blue eye shadow.

I know, I know, it will all work itself out, but this has been weighing on me.  I do not want to meddle and I do not want to be overbearing and I do not want to be intrusive, all of which have crossed my mind more than once.   On top of that I have a shitload of advice to unload.  They NEED to hear what I have to say.

How do I keep myself at bay?  I mean we're talking about a person with very little self control.  My kids are convinced I have turettes, dropping the f-bomb at the most inappropriate times (they learned to cuss from dear ol' mom, not their Marine Corps daddy).

So here is my solution - BLOGGING.  Ah yes, don't we just love this medium?  I revived my other blog "Whoas, Woes, and Wahs" and am using it to download all of this parenting advice rattling around in my head.  I had started it so we could share all of those Woe/WHOA causing moments, but juggling two blogs got to be too much and it really wasn't as interactive as I hoped.  But now, it seems to be the perfect place to house all of those bits of experience and whatnot that other people seem to constantly want  from me.  It's available if my son or other children ever want to seek it out, but more importantly it's keeping me from standing on anyone's doorstep shouting all of my self-imposed wisdom.

Assaulting Your Skin

We all know about using SPF and drinking plenty of water as ways to protect our skin, but what about our daily regimens?  Is there something we could be doing differently?

This topic came up recently as one friend complained about excessive dry patches on her face.  I suggested that she try eliminating her cleansing products for a week and see if it clears up.  Clearly I was talking nonsense.  As someone with "perfect" skin I just don't understand the struggles of "combination" skin.

Clearly.

Yeah, right, I have perfect skin.  My mom and younger brothers have spent countless hours and dollars sitting in a dermatologist office.  My teenage body was riddled with acne, not just my face, exactly like my family members.  The harder I scrubbed the worse it got.

When I started college I immediately noticed that the water was different and I was suffering very dry skin.  Out of self defense I changed my showering schedule to every other day.  Suddenly my acne cleared up and the dryness disappeared.  As a bonus, I gained an extra hour that I could sleep in or catch up on homework!

I maintained the every other day schedule when I returned home and still do it today.  Never able to afford the fancy skin care products, I discovered that el cheapo Noxema is the only cleanser I ever needed.  Yet again, I found that using it every day caused more breakouts so I resorted to a washcloth and hot water as my every day cleaner, reserving the Noxema for a few times a month.  For times I feel particularly grimy I use rubbing alcohol on a cottonball for a "deep clean".  

It took a while to find a moisturizure that worked well with my chemistry, but now I add to my daily routine a small dab of Dove facial moisturizer.  It has a 15 SPF and doesn't feel greasy.  (not a product endorsement, it just works well for me)

There have been articles written about the necessity of having SOME oil on your skin.  When we strip all of the oils from the surface our bodies go into overdrive and produce even more oil.  That means there is a good deal of logic to my process.  I'm allowing a low level of oil to moisturize my dermal layers and in return I'm being rewarded with less acne (it still pops up, like last weeks zit in my eyebrow - wtf?) and manageable dry skin. 

I also don't smoke and usually do not wear make-up.  Even when I do wear make-up, I use water and a washcloth to remove it.  No fancy stuff. 


So if you're battling your skin, my suggestion stands, back off the chemicals.  Less is more.