On second thought …

it *always* works out.  Always.  Everything as it should be.

 

Every once in a while-

things just work out. 

 

Om.

 

Zoo pictures

We went to the Zoo yesterday with the kids and the in-laws. It was PERFECT! Perfect weather, perfect animals (they were all out except the new baby elephant,) perfect kids, the in-laws were great, everything was ideal! What a great day!


 

Zoo Pictures part II

 

In brief

Things are insane around here.  Not so much busy but just full.  Full of life, full of activities and projects, full of promise – also full of stress, full of bullshit, full of annoyances, full of other people’s expectations.  Of course, in typical Mamakohl style, I’m cutting every unnecessary thing and person out until things settle down.  In that spirit, I give you my current life In Brief:

 

Tomorrow is our annual Zoo trip with my in-laws.  This year the Fragile Forest is finally open and there is a new baby to see – Raja has a daughter!  This is always a wonderful trip for us.  We love going in the middle of the week – there are no crowds and this year, the weather is supposed to be gorgeous!  I cannot wait.  Now, if we can only keep my in-laws from feeding Duck and Stealth enormous amounts of crap food.  Agh.  I mean, enough is enough already – especially when we always end the trip with a visit to Ted Drew’s.

 

The trip to San Francisco is coming up very quickly.  A few long phone conversations with Velma has gotten me so excited I can barely stand it.  We’ll be seeing the redwoods, the beach, and I’ll be staying in Chinatown for 2 or 3 nights while I’m there.  The best part (other than the Hitchin’ Party – seriously, you all, check out the link,) is going to the Burning Man street fest on my last night there.  OH YEAH, baby.  I might have to pack a second bag for the clothes for that night – watch out, world, Mama is getting her funk on.  Nothing like pyrotechnics and half naked folks to get my mojo risin’.

 

I dropped a large sum of money yesterday at my favorite local yarn shop – got a little sumpin’ sumpin’ as a surprise for a friend of mine, but more importantly, I got something for myself for the first time in ages.  I bought some Addi Turbo circular needles – maybe the nicest needles I have.  Bought them to make a lovely little scarf / shrug / turtleneck thingy that I’ve been thinking about for nearly a year.  And, I got myself some delicious Elsebeth Lavold Classic AL yarn with which to make it.  AHHHHHHHHH, 50% baby alpaca and 50% Merino wool equals 100% luxury.

 

B is growing his hair out again and the goatee / moustache has returned.  He’s looking like a badass again.  I wonder how much of is this has to do with him trying to hold onto his youth and how much of it has to do with my obsession with Kid Rock.  Either way, it’s fine with me.

 

The weather here is amazing.  Just gorgeous.  Fall, like childhood, lasts for just a blink of an eye.  Better get out there and enjoy it while it’s here.

 

What zip code is your nose in, Pinocchio?

**Disclaimer:  I don’t want to get a bunch of emails asking me if I’m writing about you.  If you are a liar, then YES, I’m writing about you.  If you’re not a liar, then just say, "Amen, Sistah!" and jump on the bandwagon.  The end.**

 

I think I may have posted here before about how much I hate lying.  I just don’t do it. 

Lying is not a part of my life anymore.  It hasn’t been for a long long time.  In fact, the closest thing I get to lying is not answering my boys one way or the other about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy.  They believe in them, but when they ask, I just tell them the history behind these "folks" or say something like "Santa is the name that folks use to describe the Spirit of Christmas" or some other vague explanation.  But good lord and butter, what parent hasn’t chewed a few nails over those issues, eh?  If they asked me flat out, I could tell them nothing but the truth.  I’m nearly incapable.

 

This week I told my husband a very hard truth.  I didn’t have to tell him.  I could have kept my mouth shut about it forever and no one would have ever noticed.  But I had to tell him because, after 3 days of not telling him, I thought I was going to lose my damned mind.  To me, it’s dishonest to even omit something.  It was hard, but I told him and you know, he laughed at me, gave me a big kiss, and told me that he knew that he could always trust me to rat myself out – that I’d never lie to him or anyone else.

 

Elvis knows I used to – I used to lie all the time. I lied to protect myself, to keep from revealing my true self that may, or may not have been, dorky.  I have lied to protect others. I have lied to get things, to get rid of things, to get my way, to get other people their way.  I have lied to folks I love, folks I hate, folks I didn’t even know.  I’ve lied about big things, little things, inconsequential things   I’ve even lied to myself more than I could ever say…

 

And then I grew up.  I learned to love myself and trust that, while I cannot predict how others might react to my truths, I sure as hell can trust myself enough to deal with it – however they react.  I saw that lying was an act of self sabotage.  The moment that you have the opportunity to lie, you have two choices : 1) take control of your life and improve it by telling the truth and growing a bit, or 2) tell a lie and continue to live in the pit of untruths and never be able to dig yourself out.  Telling the truth gives you growth.  Lying makes sure you stay a child.

 

 As a parent, it’s part of my life’s path to deal with lying.  Thus far, I’ve caught my kiddos attempting to lie a time or two, but they’ve gotten the message that they’ll be in so much less trouble if they tell me the truth about what they did than if they lie about it.  It’s part of being a kid, part of testing boundaries and growing up.  It’s frustrating, it’s annoying, but it’s part of the gig and I’ll take it – I understand it.

What I do not understand is adults who lie.  And there are many many many of them.  I cannot wrap my brain around this to save my soul.  One would think that, after having survived a minimum of 28 years on this planet (’cause I think folks in their 20’s are still just glorified kids,) one would have the knowledge and strength and the understanding that the truth is all that is needed.  The truth is ALWAYS good enough.  These folks think that they’re lying in order to "save face" as it were, but in reality, they lose all credibility the minute the speak the first words of untruth.  And the kicker is this – that credibility doesn’t come back.  You’ve lied, you’ve lost your shot at anyone trusting you.  Period.  Yes, over time, we may come back around and give you another shot, but we’ll never ever forget that you’ve not given us enough credit, that you didn’t think we were important enough to hear the truth.

 

Is it really worth all of that? 

 

Really, what is so bad about telling someone where you’ve been?  Who you saw?  What you ate?  What movie you saw?  Why you like this song or hate that one?  Why you went here or didn’t go there?  Why you still have a powder blue tuxedo in your closet or why you’re still hanging onto your first boyfriend’s t-shirt?  If you do or don’t like tofu, if you do or don’t recycle, of you do or don’t have sex with the lights on?  What the hell, folks?  If you’ve done something, you have a reason.  If that reason is good enough for you, that’s what matters – why lie about it?  Lying only makes you look guilty and like you have something to hide.  Those things, combined with dishonesty, just show the world that you’re not trustworthy.

 

And don’t think you’re good at lying.  Don’t think that folks don’t know.  Most adults, ones with a conscious anyway, can spot a lie the second the world comes out of your mouth.  Know why?  Because adult liars are just that – adults.  Adults *know* better and so they give themselves away every single time.

 

Here’s things, all you adult liars out there – we just want to hang out and get to know *you.*  We don’t give two shits about your lies.  We don’t care – it doesn’t make you look cool.  It makes you look like you don’t trust us, that we’re not even worth the truth to you.  It also makes you look like you don’t have the least bit of confidence in yourself – and if you don’t have confidence in yourself, why the hell should we have confidence in you?  You’re cheating everyone. You’re cheating yourself out of the chance to be authentic and you’re cheating us out of the chance to love you.  That might be the biggest crime of all.

 

So stop lying.  Just stop. Now.  Today.  You owe it to yourselves.  And once you start living an authentic, truth filled life, you can start smelling all the beautiful roses under your own feet – instead of the ones 4 counties over. 

 

Mamakohl at age 127

Thanks, Mark.

BFF

Me & JP

 

Check it out –

My kids do a lot of learning from cd-roms. They have their own computer and we have a lot of educational software. They love it, I feel good about what they’re learning. Good stuff.

This past week we got two new programs –

DK’s The Ultimate Human Body – I cannot tell if this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen or a raging piece of crap. I’m leaning towards the coolest thing I’ve ever seen with some disappointing features. I cannot even get into what all it does – seriously, you can look at every system of your body, every organ, everything in 3D rotational imagery. There’s videos that help teach anatomy and physiology. It’s *outstanding!* The problem? Not all of the features work. There’s one system scan -the X-Ray – that just won’t work at all on my kid’s computer. I’ve read reviews and have discovered that this is common – some discs work great, some don’t work at all. It’s hit or miss. I cannot promise that yours will work if you get one. As for us, I’ve decided that the educational aspect of even 2/3 of the program working outweighs the disappointment of the 1/3 that doesn’t work. If you’re gonna get it, a few things to note – it does NOT work on XP or Mac. It’s designed to run on Win95 /98, but will work on ME, too.

We also got School House Rock! Grammar Rock. I swear, the boys LOVE this game and so do I. Everything that you remember from School House Rock is on this game (Busy Prepositions, Conjunction Junction, etc.) It’s fun, easy to figure out, educational. It’s cool to hang out with School House Rocky and Mr. Morton. And this game has no bizarro quirks – it all works well!

And Karma is back on my side

We had a structural engineer come to our house tonight and look at the foundation and all around the house. It was quite simple to do – he is the husband of my mother’s best friend – and he did it for absolutely nothing. He and B went over every inch of the house and he says our foundation is actually in remarkably good shape! The crack in the foundation that we discovered on Sunday as well as the one near the stairs are not endangering our house (as far as he can tell,) and the believes that they can be fixed up with injection of silicon – and that he probably has the stuff we need to use to do it and he can show B how to do it himself. Even if he doesn’t have the stuff, it’s only going to cost us around $100 max to buy it.

We went from thinking about taking out a $10K loan to maybe spending $100 and some elbow grease!!!

Man, I feel like I could walk on air.

Oh, and we got new gutters yesterday, too. So, a new roof, new gutters, and the news that our foundation isn’t going to be destroyed the next time it rains is making me one happy happy mama! 🙂