Pollyanna Day 24

This post should have happened last night, but there was just no time.  NO TIME, I say!  Thanks to my girlz who came over and hung out (and laughed) and talked (and laughed) with me last night after the kids were in bed, I learned why I should be grateful that I'm not a certain love-starved animal living in the zoo.

I'm not a giraffe.   Most people who know me already know that I'm not a giraffe.  But you probably don't know why I'm THANKFUL that I'm not a giraffe.  It's ok.  I didn't know myself, until I was enlightened last night.

It seems my friend "Jane" (name changed to protect the semi-innocent) went to the zoo as a field trip chaperon this week.  It was cold and wet on this particular day, so many of the animals were inside, including the giraffes.  I didn't know they made houses that tall, did you?

I digress.

So "Jane" observes that the giraffes are in their own little stalls, separate from one another.  The male giraffe is banging his head repeatedly against the side of his stall.  Over...and over...and over again...until he's bleeding. The female giraffe is just hanging out in the next stall, blissfully oblivious to the tantrum that's happening right next door.   When "Jane" inquires as to what in the world is wrong with this poor male giraffe, she's informed that he's...well...a bit frustrated.   Apparently, his lady friend next door was in heat, and he was none too happy about being kept from doing his manly duties.  I guess their stalls aren't really built to accommodate any sort of bumping and grinding, and it was just too darn cold to let them outside.  Gee zoo people, something tells me they wouldn't have noticed the weather.  But the thought of "Jane" having to explain such a scene of animal debauchery to those kindergartners does make me giggle a little.  Or a lot.  Actually, we laughed til we cried last night.

"Jane" explained it like this:  "It was cold and wet and miserable at the zoo that day, but all I could think was, 'At least I'm not a giraffe.'"

Indeed, Jane.  Indeed.  I'm sure we all share that sentiment.

I'd write more on this subject, but I've got to run out and get my season pass to the zoo.

Pollyanna Day 23

You know how you sign your kids up for city soccer and it rains and snows and blows gale force winds for half the games but the city won't actually CANCEL a game unless someone gets struck by lightning?  Well, this isn't about that.

Soccer.  Being a soccer mom is a whole lotta work.  It sucks up a whole lotta time.  It eats up a whole lotta disposable income in the form of drive thrus and take-n-bake pizzas and gasoline and anti-depressants. BUT...

Watching my kids play their last few soccer games, some of the sport's virtues have started to shine through just a tad.  I like what my kids are learning from it:  

Set a goal.  

Run your butt off.

Work hard.

Work together.  

Run TO it, not AWAY from it.  

It's ok to want to beat the other guy, so long as you play fair.  

You may not like your opponent, but you can still play nice.

Sometimes you'll lose, but don't be a jerk.

When soccer first started,  I was worried that I wasn't going to live to see the end of the six-week-long season.  Or more likely, my CHILDREN weren't going to live to see it.  The six weeks really have flown by.  No, that's a big fat lie.  The six weeks haven't dragged like I thought they would.  "Flown by" is a bit strong of a phrase here.  And while it's been a big drain on my sanity and my energy levels, I'm grateful for the life lessons my kids are learning while playing.  

It beats the snot out of ME having to teach them these things.  That's what I'm paying the city for, right?

Pollyanna Day 22

After a day of work, kids, dinner, kids, grocery shopping, kids,dishes, kids, homework, kids, laundry, kids, soccer, kids, bath night, and last but not least kids...I'm really thankful for Tylenol PM.

Nighty night.

(Snarky 'nuff for ya, Tam?)

Pollyanna Day 21

I guess that means I've kept this up for three whole weeks now.   I'm seriously impressing myself.

If you grow up in the Mormon church, there are certain songs that you sing so often as a small child and know so well by the age of twelve that you can sing them in your sleep...while standing on your head...while juggling flashlights.   One of them is a song about blossoming trees.

Popcorn popping.  

I looked out the window and what did I see?
Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.
Spring had brought me such a nice surprise...
blossoms popping right before my eyes.


I can take an armful and make a treat...
a popcorn ball that would smell so sweet.


It wasn't really so, but it seemed to me...
popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

Living nearly my entire life in the desert, I never really picked up on the significance of this song.  In Arizona, things go from brown to green.  Not much drama or fanfare (or popping) involved in the process.

Now, being in a place with four actual seasons,  I get it.  I get what this little ditty has been trying to convey all these years.  Trees come to life in the spring!  So do flowers and bushes and plants and even grass.

This is my second spring here and I think I'm more in awe this time around than I was last year.  What a blessing it is, after enduring a long, cold winter when everything goes gray and dormant, to see every color of the rainbow  popping up on lawns and in parks almost overnight.

Tulips are my new favorites.  My daughter said to me the other day, "Mommy, I always thought tulips were just pretend; that they were just made-up flowers in movies.  I didn't think they really existed."   How sad is the life of a desert rat?   The poor kid thought tulips were the Easter Bunny of the plant kingdom.

I love spring in my new home.  Everything is green and vibrant with color.  The pictures above are of a tree in my back yard.  It looks a lot like popcorn popping, don't you think?

I suddenly feel like writing a song...

Pollyanna Day 20

I have a new morning routine.

Pomegranate Craisins.   For about the last couple of years now, I've performed the same morning ritual:  Get up, throw on the workout clothes and sneakers, grab my water bottle and a handful of granola along with a handful of cherry flavored Craisins.  It's a yummy little taste sensation that provides just enough sustinence to keep me from getting light-headed and passing out during my workout.  .  


So last week I'm doing my shopping and I go to grab my usual week's supply of these goodies when something new catches my eye:  POMEGRANATE flavored Craisins.   Ooh.  I was intrigued.  It took me a few minutes to get up the courage to take them off the shelf and put them in my cart.  Cherry Craisins and I, after all, had been entangled in a two year long love affair.  This was a big step for me.  I'm so glad I made the switch.   Pomegranate is the bomb-diggity!   Sorry, cherry, but it was time for a change.  


p.s.  I highly recommend these tasty snacks.  A word of caution:  one handful at a time is plenty.  I probably don't need to explain the effects on your tummy when you OD on dehydrated fruit.   If you don't see where I'm going with this, do yourself a favor and just take my word for it.  One...handful...at...a time.

Pollyanna Day 19

I'm almost out of the teens!  Final stretch, here I come!

Oceans.  Last year, when Disney put out their somewhat condensed version of the Discovery series, Planet Earth, I rounded up the kids and headed to the theater.  I had seen parts of the documentary on TV, and I thought it would be way cool to check it out on the big screen.  I was not disappointed.  There were parts of that film that actually caused a medium sized lump to form in my throat.  Yes, the cinematography is amazing and it was beautifully done, but what wows me is our planet.  Earth is such a super star.

Disney's follow-up to that film, landing conveniently again on Earth Day week, is another triumph.  I took the kids to see Oceans today (after a bad experience with mexican food at Los Hermanos--hate that place).   I can't say I loved this one as much as I did the first, but there were one or two of those lump-in-the-throat moments.   Most of us never experience more of the ocean than some knee deep frolicking on the shore.  I love how, through the wonders of modern technological advances, we can experience things that we'd likely never have the chance to otherwise.   There was, of course, the occasional force-feeding of environmental propaganda, with the big bad humans being painted as the destroyers of all things earthly and pristine.  But I anticipated it and took it with the usual grain of salt (the organic variety, of course).   Overall I say, good job, Disney.  Can't wait for the one about the big cats next year, the one with lions eating smaller, vulnerable animals.   Now that's what I'm talkin 'bout.

Men with stubble.  Every day as I drive through town, I pass one gargantuan diesel pickup truck after another.  More often than not, they're pulling flat bed trailers loaded up with quads or snowmobiles or jet skis.  It's always the same kinda man driving these trucks:  the MANLY man, complete with camouflage cap and a good 48 hours' worth of stubbly beard growth.  These men are HOT.  Hot, I say.  There's no shortage of  outdoor activities where I live.  We've got mountains, lakes, rivers, canyons, and waterfalls.  This means hunting, fishing, hunting, hiking, hunting, skiing, and also hunting.   This translates further to gun racks and expensive boy toys being paraded around on flatbed trailers.

I'm not even a little enamored with all the metrosexualized mama's boys running around town these days.   Please forgive me, but I'm inclined to post yet another set of song lyrics that say it better than I ever could:

These days there's dudes gettin' facials
Manicured, waxed and botoxed;
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands
You can't grip a tacklebox

With all of these men linin' up to get neutered
It's hip now to be feminized
I don't highlight my hair;
I've still got a pair;
Yeah honey, I'm still a guy

Oh my eyebrows ain't plucked
There's a gun in my truck
Oh thank God...I'm still a guy 

This song makes me giggle right out loud every time I hear it.  Last night as I was headed home in my sexy mom minivan, I got stuck behind a very long caravan of what I later found out were SWAT team hell week participants.  Fire trucks, unmarked police cars, sheriff's department vehicles, and lots of guys in camo gear being tormented by their peers and pushed to physical limits (they were behind the fire trucks and they were pushing them up the street, for crying out loud!).  Of course, it didn't look like any of them had shaved in days.  I've never seen so much stubble in one place.  So to all of you manly, testosterone-oozing, fuzzy-faced men driving around town, please accept my gratitude for providing all the eye candy.    I, for one, am glad you're still guys.

Pollyanna Day 18

Day 18.  Pollyanna's back.

Friends who know me (and still like me).  I had a hard, hard night with my kids a couple of nights ago.  My patience had been wearing thinner and thinner over the course of several days, and on this particular evening, I lost it.  My kids paid the price and so did I.  The next morning, I did what I often do when I'm struggling with my mommy duties and I contacted a friend who always knows what to do in these situations.  This is a friend who has talked me down from more ledges than I can even begin to count over the last few years.  I am so very grateful for people in my life who know me and understand me (or who at least try to pretend to understand me) and who are always thoughtful enough to say the things that will help ME at that particular moment, rather than throwing the usual cliches at me.  "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade, " or "When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on," or "What doesn't kill you will make you stronger."   All lovely sentiments, I suppose, but hearing these things from a friend doesn't exactly make me feel like he/she is in tune with my specific struggles in those specific moments.   The friends who "get" me because they've TAKEN THE TIME to "get" me are the ones who save my life on a daily basis.   This makes me think of a song I like a lot.  I'm going to risk being labeled a cheeseball and post the lyrics here:


Sometimes I swear, I don't know if I'm comin' or goin'
But you always say something without even knowin'
That I'm hangin' on to your words with all of my might and it's all right
Yeah, I'm all right...for one more night-
Every day...
You save my life


I'm a better person for all that you've taught me and my family is blessed every day for my knowing you.  I'm forever grateful for your love and friendship in my life.


The beginning of the end.  I work for a major university.  Yesterday was graduation day.  Graduation day is so fan-flippin-tastic.  As I left campus after work, I couldn't help but smile as I looked around.  I saw proud parents walking along sidewalks with their cap-and-gown-adorned sons and daughters.   I saw the droves of graduates lining up outside campus to have their parents snap their pictures in front of the big signs at the entrance of the university before they made their way to graduation ceremonies.  The face of accomplishment truly is beautiful.  There's something about seeing someone work hard to achieve a goal--or a dream--then being there to see them cross the finish line and do their victory dance in the end zone.  Ok, that was a reference to two completely unrelated sports, but you see where I'm going with this.  Graduation day just makes me happy.   I'm not a professor, but I do work in student outreach, so in some ways, I feel like my little babies have grown up and conquered the world.   Go get 'em, my little lambkins.  


Mom.  My mom moved here about a month or so ago.  We are all so glad she finally decided to make her way out of the desert and into the promised land (sorry, couldn't resist).  I have no doubt that she probably feels pulled in a thousand different directions because now that she's here...well...FREE BABYSITTING!  For all of us!  She watched my kids for me today so I could go into work and I just want her to know that I appreciate her. Whenever she's been here, my kids always come home, look around the house, and say, "Oh, Nanna's been here."  She washes and folds clothes, vacuums, cleans the kitchen, and generally straightens up around the house.  She doesn't have to, but I'm grateful to her for her efforts to make my day a little easier when she visits.    Thanks, mom.  We love you!