A letter to Deb

I was waiting in the parking lot of the school where I have been mentoring some troubled female students when one of the teachers, who is a friend approached me. Cam and I work out together on Friday mornings. We are both women of age who share the same goals, to be fit as we head into forties and maintain a certain fitness level. We also have children the same age and love shoes!

While we were talking we were approached by the woman who runs the mentoring program, she goes by Deb. Well Deb walked up and rolled her eyes when she heard we were talking about a fitness class we were both taking.

“Must be nice to have so much time to work out and be all fit.” She hissed, “Some of us have to work for a living.”

As you can imagine my bitch flag shot up the pole and my eyes narrowed. Cam gently squeezed my arm to ease my attack on the clueless Deb.

Dear Deb:

Yes Deb when I am not eating bon bons and being pampered by my team of hot cabana males, I work out with a personal trainer and eat food prepared by the top chefs. WTF, this is the real world!

Deb I work 50 hours a week, I haul my kids to sports practices and games in season, as well as participate in school events, make all the meals, clean the house, do the laundry, get my social media fix in, craft, read AND work out, then have enough time to blog about your stupidity. It’s called time management and for someone who runs a mentoring program it is something that you should perhaps know a little something about.

Deb reality is that if you want to achieve certain goals you need to learn to manage your time. I needed to make fitness a priority in my life because when I feel good about myself it reflects in everything I do. I work better, I deal with people better, I can keep up with my family’s needs and we eat better. Oh and did I mention I lost forty pounds in a year? That happens when you set goals, you like meeting goals right? You must since it is on every one of your damn emails I have received!

A person who works with troubled youth is the last person on earth that should make a comment based on someone’s first impression, especially when you know nothing about them. Perception is different than reality in 9 out of 10 cases. I am guilty of making rash decisions of people usually based on stupid things that come out of their mouths rather than appearance.

Deb because I was feeling generous  and Cam was holding my arm, I gave you the benefit of the doubt yesterday and hoped that you were just having a bad day and that is why you said what you did. I plan on showing up to my next mentoring session in my work out gear just to make sure though.

Sincerely, Me

Yes this really happened!

The most bizarre thing that has ever happened to me as a parent happened this morning. I mean honestly I had to take a few hours before I could even absorb it, let alone speak of it. All three kids woke up this morning without argument, got washed, dressed, then ate breakfast, thanked me for breakfast. They brushed their teeth, did their chores, put on their shoes and there wasn’t a single argument. There was laughter and joking.

This never happens, let alone in my house. At some point over the weekend these kids were replaced by pod people. No way in hell were they mine!

Usually every morning is cage matches to the death between the girls, groaning from the boys, then all three start fighting while I am screaming like a mad woman. Mondays are that multiplied by the first three levels of hell. But not this morning.

I pinched myself a few times to make sure that I wasn’t having another one of my Wasabi Almond induced dreams, but I am really awake and this really did happen today. I didn’t tell hubs about it, there is no way he would believe me! I mean this just doesn’t happen. But then again neither does this beautiful weather that we have been having which may be responsible for the strange occurrence this morning.

I mean we did spend a great deal of time out enjoying the weather. The kids wore themselves out every day. The girls learned to right bikes without training wheels, all three kids drove the four wheeler, we hiked three miles on a fitness trail. They went to the park, they ran around with friends. It is possible that all this fresh air and sunshine has caused this phenomenon that is a peaceful Monday morning.

BUT, if you hear from me and I have lost my ability to toss out the sarcastic quip, or I don’t complain about co-workers and stupid people at least a dozen times a day, then this isn’t a phenomenon, it’s pod people!

20 day check in

There are 80 days until I turn 40. I would like to tell everyone I had some complete breakthrough in my first 20 days and wow everyone with reflections of an awesome nature. But the first 20 days led to a semi-unexpected breakdown. Here I am celebrating my life thus far when handed several unexpected bag of tricks at home and the work place, it kind of changes a girl’s game plan.

The home stuff isn’t anything major, just financial changes that one deals with when you have three children. The joys of dental bills, growth spurts and pre-pubescent angst, puberty, insurance increases for our soon to be driving teen and whatever the hell the youngest is going through! We will just call it the diva condition.

The work thing however is a bag I never expected to receive. Our president announced her departure two weeks ago and until last week I was in a complete state of shock. While in shock about the departure and what that would mean for all of us, we had a new employee and a new project to deal with. No time for self pity, just put on those big girl panties and push through.

But pushing through isn’t always easy when it comes to something so uncertain. Our leader has been there since the beginning, helped create a vision and maintained momentum with a strength that few could rival. We all followed suit even when things became uncertain during a weakened economy, a new mayor and loss of fiscal contracts. You wonder if anyone new can come into that role and truly understand the importance of what she did and how she did it. And of course there is finding someone to deal with the eclectic band of misfits she put together as her staff.

We really are a mixing pot of crazy people who on paper you would never think would ever work well together. When your focus is downtown Indy and you all share this unbridled passion to help create a city to be proud of, you find a common ground. In that common ground we became a family. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for anyone of the people and they wouldn’t do for me. Right now we are all in our big girl and boy panties holding hands taking deep breaths as we try to get through this thing together.

So as I look at 80 days until my big day, I think about the 100 plus days until I say good bye to a woman that had a hand in changing the last 11 years of my life. She was my greatest cheerleader even when I made mistakes. She gave me opportunities that I never thought I would have. When no one else could see the potential I had, she did. How do you say good bye to someone like that? You can’t really, they are always a part of you and the person that you are.

In 80 days I turn 40, but I’d think I’d like to be like her when I grow up.