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Groundhogs Day and Marriage

Therapy Tuesday

Many relationships just exist. Many people just live day in and day out. At best, they co-exist. What happens is that we just get wrapped up in the day to day responsibilities and forget that once there was an us. 

We wake up and go to work, come home and take care of the kids, then run some household chores, dishes, bills, laundry and pass out in bed, wake up the next morning and do it all over again. Weekends are a bit different and there is usually no work, but if you are like me, I am a taxi cab driver for my kids on the weekends. I often tell them to paint my car yellow and black.  I get in my car at 9am and usually drive my kids back and forth from one activity to the next till about 9pm, if I’m lucky I get a dinner break. Somehow, I find that even more exhausting than a work day.

I have read many articles and books on relationships.  Most of the advice all boils down to the same basic concepts.  Spend quality time together, concentrate on how you speak to each other, communicate your feelings and expectations are some of the top ones.

Cheap, Fast AND Good?

Meal Monday

There is the old saying about "cheap, fast, and good": pick two, because you will not get all three. Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross, the Desperation Dinners duo, say that you actually can get all three when it comes to meals. At least, that is the premise of their book, Cheap. Fast. Good!

The authors of a syndicated column and two books about quick and easy cooking wondered what would happen if they tried to shift their focus to include saving money as well as time. They say that they "went in looking for pennies, but what we found were dollars."

Princesses Gone Wild!

Family Friday

My little girl won't turn five until next month, but she has crammed more femininity into her short life than I have in my 38+ years on this planet.  Consider the evidence:
- Her favorite colors are pink and purple.
- She always sits still and listens to the teacher.
- She only wants to wear dresses - the poofier the better.
- She loves to have her babysitter polish her tiny fingernails and toenails.
- Her favorite names are Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, and Cinderella.
- Her favorite pop song, which she sings loudly and frequently, contains the lyrics:  "You be the PRINCE and I'll be the PRINCESS, it's a LOVE STORY - BABY JUST SAY YES!!!!"

About a year ago, a woman at the grocery store told her she was cute.  "I'm not cute," she corrected, "I'm adorable!"  Now if that isn't gag-inducing, I don't know what is.  Fortunately, after a long talk about inner beauty and modesty, this did not recur. 

The fascination with all things girlie, however, has continued.  Until now, I've been fairly bemused but not bothered by it.

Clever Telephones of the Future

Image via Wikipedia

Technology Thursday at Mom Spa

How seriously clever could your phone become? Google just announced a new product, Google Voice. I'll quote David Pogue at the New York Times who summarizes what it is and does:

It unifies your phone numbers, transcribes your voice mail, blocks telemarketers and elevates text messages to first-class communication citizens. And that’s just the warm-up.
[...]
Never again will you pay for a conference call, or require a special dial-in number, or mess around with access codes.
[...]
[I]t sends text messages to whichever cellphones you want — even multiple phones simultaneously. Even more important, it collects them in your Web in-box just like e-mail. You can file them, search them and, for the first time in cellphone history, keep them. They don’t vanish forever once your cellphone gets full.

The rest of the article has more. To me, this is how phones should work. And it got me thinking about phone technology generally.

Does Parenting Get Easier?

Work Wednesday

When I was a new mom, struggling to breastfeed and not recognizing the woman in the mirror every morning, the hope that sustained me was the common refrain from experienced moms, "It'll get easier." And for a time, they seemed to be right. The baby would sleep through the night -- even one night was a reprieve -- or my milk production would finally catch up with her appetite.

But then it would get harder again. She'd go through a growth spurt and stop sleeping, and then she'd start moving or having her own opinions. Now that we've got a houseful of extremely verbal girls, the clashing viewpoints on a simple question like "pancakes or waffles" can be overwhelming. Getting from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. sometimes seems like a marathon.

So I was tickled to come across Claudine Wolk's Hybrid Mom Insider blog and learn the title of her book, "It Gets Easier! And Other Lies We Tell New Mothers." I haven't read the book but I would love to, just from the promise of the title and the important question it raises. Is it a lie? Does motherhood get easier?