No Better Way To Be

We are all given things in life. By the universe, genetics, people, animals, possessions, ourselves; every meaningful interaction in life has given us something. In the endless hustle and bustle of life, technology is fueling a jet stream paced existence. People are focused on how much they can have materialistically instead of intellectually or spiritually, whether or not it has been given or taken. They no longer care about others from a Team Human perspective. Everything is about ego, money, and control, and somehow we’ve lost the ability to care about the whole.

Just look at what happens whenever we take large groups of people and continually bring them together for large amounts of time on a daily basis. They turn on one another in some fact or form. School shootings, workplace violence, internet trolling, church bombings. The need to rise above all else, to be given the free ride to the top, has consumed an entire species, if you will. Because, that’s what we truly are under these T.J. Maxx and Macy’s splurges. Animals. Yet, somehow, in our most recent advancement of evolution into the age of finger tip technology and internet everything’s, we have lost touch with our humanity. Having is more valuable than experiencing.

I am an emotional and spiritual (not as in having strong religious beliefs, but as in my connection with my inner self) person, with empathic abilities. It is easier for me than most to see from a metaphysical perspective than a physical one. For me, it is impossible to relate to this change in the human species. I cannot fancy things as much as I do memories, feelings, and moments. I want to become attached to what life has given me, not throw it away for the next best thing. It is inconceivable for me to think of putting my own personal desires above the greater good of those around me, the way I see those around me doing themselves.

To me, it is inconceivable to relate to other people based on materialistic attributes and financial wealth. To focus solely on gain… To be so unsatisfied with the human to human interactions which made it possible for our species to evolve this far. How can people not see the beauty of the human race anymore? When did we become so robotic in nature, so closed off to our natural existence that we cannot see past our exterior appearances and faux pas facades of bravado. No one lives for the enjoyment of simply being alive and taking in all the wonders life offers up. We don’t take care of our species as a whole, despite all of our accomplishments as one. My mind just blows over the selfishness and greed with which people have chosen to live in at the suffering of others. Borders divide us into separate packs, but no species will completely itself off to rule all the land, they systematically and strategically preserve their species. We destroy ours.

It is in my nature to ponder the meaning in everything going on around me all the time. I’m always seeking the gift the universe has hidden in my children’s laughter and tears, in my husband’s gentle touch when I’m in severe pain, in the elderly woman who’s smile I return at the grocery store. Looking for the lesson being given every time I face a problem, overcome a struggle, or own up to a responsibility I had previously shunned. It’s the little things in life which fuel my passion and motivate me to push for an even brighter tomorrow. Every moment is something more valuable to me than any item, any label, or any status. I take what I am given and accept it as the gift it is, making it work to the best of my abilities without fail. It saddens me to think of all those who will never understand how wonderful it feels to savor a long conversation with an old friend, or feel gracious feeding my neighbors who would otherwise go without, or spending a few quality minutes talking to the grumpy man in the ridiculously long line at Costco without passing judgement on him later.

Maybe one day this technology era will fizzle out and humanity will see itself as a piece of the whole species and not just an individual member out for it’s own independent survival. Maybe it will only get worse. I hope not, because I couldn’t imagine living a life much worse than one without any real connection to the world around them and taking more than just what’s been given. My finances may be poor, my abode humble, and my possessions minimal, but I’m rich with love, passionate about life, compassionate about everything this world contains…and I’m blessed with what fate has given me. There’s no better way to be.

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom

Worry Less, Believe More: I’m Still A Good Mother

All any Mother wants is to be a good mom for her children. For them to know just how much she loves them and what she would sacrifice for their happiness. For most mothers, it is a wanton worry because they are a living example of the stereotype. They have all the makings in their bag of tricks, so it’s no surprise: financial and emotional stability, great health, stores of energy, craftiness, patience, and most importantly, after unconditional love, a great support system. I worry to the point of paranoia, because I don’t have anything on the list but unconditional love to offer my children. Will they understand one day? Will they resent me for being their Mother? Will they tell other people what a bad mother I was, when they are adults? Will we even have a relationship left by the time they’re grown?

With four kids, our expenses are stretched thin and it is damn near impossible to keep them in brand new clothes. We haven’t stepped foot inside a mall in years. They don’t have multiple pairs of shoes or oodles of accessories, hats, and belts to color coordinate with their outfits. They certainly have what they need, but they do not have a wide variety or a multitude of anything; much unlike their friends from school. My second son would cut off his left arm for a pair of Air Jordan’s, but we just can’t afford $150 for a pair of shoes to make the kid happy, and it pains me. There are no extracurricular activities like basketball, soccer, or dance. No family dates to museums, bowling alleys, or the movies, either. Our financial situation sucks more than ever since I’ve been unable to work. Yet, I don’t qualify for disability because I waited too long to apply. Are my kids going to think their childhood was shafted? Will they miss out on discovering a real talent? Will they hate me because they missed out on so many common life experiences which can’t be made up?

My health is not good for someone only in her early thirties. I have Degenerative Disc Disease with bone spurs. It limits my mobility even though I do push my physical limitations farther then I’m supposed to. I could never compare myself to those Pinterest-perfect moms I secretly envy. It causes me to waste precious energy on worries from self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness. Exacerbating the whole situation is the depression I’m constantly battling for control. Impeding thoughts of doom and gloom race through my mind frequently, playing out like those made for television Lifetime movies. Some days, I’m so physically drained which wears on me mentally, I feel like I’m deadweight and can’t move from “mom’s spot” on the couch. These are days I have to tell my children that I just don’t feel well enough to play horsey or go to the park, they can’t have friends over or make the intricate craft we had planned a week ago. I feel like the worst mom on the face of this earth in these low moments. Do they think I am the worst mom ever, too? Do they accept my illness and know it isn’t my fault? Do they see how much I try to push through my pain and despair? Will they hold this against me until the day I die? Will they call me crazy one day? Will they be stunted in some way because I’m not always emotionally available?

My biggest wish would be to have a traditional support system to lean on while I make my way through this haphazard parenting journey I’m on. In some way or another, I know it would make a huge difference in the way things are right now. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be drowning in trepidation over my relationship with my children if I had any kind of support at all. With my husband’s twelve hour, half-afternoon/half-midnight work shift leaving me as a married-single mother, it is just me and the kids- twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The only day off he gets he needs to use for recharging his own batteries, which doesn’t allow for giving me a day off for myself. This is the point where everyone suggests I call my parents or his and ask to drop the hooligans off for a few hours, the day, or a sleepover. Ask a good friend to come over and help me clean up the house. Call up an aunt to see if you can come over for a girl chat gossip session while your kids run wild in her humongous backyard. This is now the point where I begin laughing maniacally in their face. I don’t have those kind of comfy-cozy close relationships in my life. There is no one willing, able, or offering to help me raise my children, despite all the hurdles I have on my course. Are they going to realize I didn’t have the support those good mothers have? Will they see how limited my options really were? Do they know how much I have given of myself to do right by them? Are they going to see me as a failure? Will they think I didn’t give them enough? Are they going to distance themselves from me as they grow? Do they think I’m broken? Do they EVEN know how much I love them?

My worrisome, guilt-ridden thoughts eat away at my confidence. They bring me far away from my natural happy-go-lucky, go-with-the-flow disposition, taking me to a place of depression which is hard to climb out of. But NOT impossible. I still have the greatest of all the good mother makings in my bag, the most powerful of them all: unconditional love. It is true what they say about love conquering all because no matter how low my obsessive worrying brings me, I am always able to find my way back on the love train. Regardless of my pain level, the bad days full of darkness, or my inability to provide a wealth of experiences and material things I always have an infinite bounty of love for my children; no strings attached. The love I have for them pours out of my heart and soul with no limitations, no conditions, and no boundaries. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for their well-being even if it meant dealing with excruciating pain. I can’t be so hard on myself for not fitting the mold of a stereotype designed around circumstances which are NOT my own. If my children cannot feel the love I never stop giving them, then it is no fault of my own, because I am doing the best job of mothering I am capable of doing.
Have I taught them to be compassionate enough? Have I shown them how to be themselves despite social expectations? Do they see I march to the beat of my own drum, because it is the beat of my soul? Will they realize you don’t have to be anything but yourself? Will my journey inspire them one day?

Molds were made to be broken. It is encouraged to think outside the box more than ever now. It is wrong for me to deny myself the credit I’m due and look down upon myself with unnecessary regret and guilt. I will love my children to the moon, around all the planets in the universe, through the Milky Way, across all the stars, and back into my heart…to infinity and beyond sanity until the day I die. I would give my last breath for them, to sound contritely cliché, without hesitation. They give me purpose and motivate me to fight the battles in my life and overcome the challenges they present. I want to be the best me I can be for them. All the worrying I do may be justifiable, but it is just as wanton as it is for any good mother.

Because, despite which tricks I may, or may not, have inside my mothering bag…I am as good a mother as any. Whether I worry incessantly, or not. It’s up to me to believe in myself- believe I’m a good mother, because not one of those tricks will do that for me.
What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t teach my kids to believe in themselves by me believing in myself first? The kind of mother I’ll never be, that’s who!

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom

Where Art Thou, My Beloved Kitchenware? Come Home Again, I Say!

Everyone knows all about the Sock Trolls and Binkie and Tooth Fairies. Dust Bunnies and those two devilishly mischievous and invisible characters- Nobody and Somebody. You’ve heard tales about the Land of Lost Things. About monsters lurking in closets and under beds. Elves that make shoes by the light of the moon, trolls under bridges, and garden gnomes. Santa and his North Pole. The Easter Bunny. Blackholes and vortices. The list goes on and on of mythical, magical, unknown, and legendary beings, creatures, and places that can interact with and impact human life.
So what in the name of hell could be taking my gawdamn dishes and silverware!?!?
This is a serious dilemma here, people and my position is very strong. My plates, bowls, forks, table- and teaspoons, and drinking cups are mysteriously vanishing into thin air at random. I can’t even claim that the mythical dishwasher creature is gobbling up pieces for a snack, because I don’t freaking own a dishwasher! Everything is washed by hand in this house, by method of good ole child slave labor chore lists. I realize my tweenager is a human garbage disposal with his bottomless pit of an appetite fueling an endless growth spurt, but I’m pretty sure he’s not inhaling his eating utensils and tableware when he eats. Neither is the beast of a dog we call Mayble. Nor the diabolical cherub of a toddler, or any other family member in my personal circus, at that.

Honestly, I don’t understand for a moment, how this is happening. It’s one thing to lose pacifiers and sippy cups out of the blue. Stray toys, mates to socks or shoes, loose change, and the matching earring to your favorite pair. Not to mention how something is always going missing from my wardrobe, lost in the laundry in no man’s land. I sure don’t mind, and completely expect, the occasional disappearing paperwork or utility bill.

Hell, I even lose a dozen lighters every week, despite having a designated area in which I keep my stash of smoking and rolling utensils, but I’ve grown accustomed to that, simply as a fact of life. Lighters are one of the most commonly stolen items, after all.

But when I open the drawer to grab out some silverware to set the dinner table with, I’m surely not anticipating the scramble to wash the few forks we dirtied at lunch, all because there’s not enough clean to serve everyone, all of a sudden. Yet, that is exactly what it has come to in my house as of late. Unless, that is, you are totally okay with using the BPA-free, baby-friendly chunky plasticware, left unscathed by this unknown silverware stealing force. Yeah. I didn’t think so. One, lone, measly pea at a time is not an enjoyable way to eat.

When I noticed my supply of cereal bowls, spoons, and butter knives was dangerously dwindling down to a single meal’s setting type low the first time, I went out and bought new supplies to cover at least three more meals’ worth. Twelve new cereal bowls and eighteen new spoons and knives. Six new tumbler cups for the big kids and adults. I even bought eight new forks, just to have an even amount all around the silverware drawer. Here it is, only a bit over six months later, and, not only am I down 9 of those bowls, most of the spoons, and the majority of the forks, but I’m down a handful of plates inexplicably now, too. I’m completely dumbfounded over this. Mind-blown. The whole situation is unfathomable to me. Extreme measures have been implemented to prevent further dishes from being lost in space. Picnics have been banned and everyone, including the grown-ups, are forced to eat all of their snacks and meals within the confines of the kitchen, no matter what.  No good, though. My dishes and silverware are still diminishing, a couplefew more with every passing week.

Even if the dishes are being broken and the silverware was accidentally being thrown out, there’s still no reasonable explanation for the cups. After my second pregnancy produced a second boy barely a day over a year after the first, I replaced all of our glassware with plastic, break-proof stuff. So, again, I ask you…
Where the fuq have all of my dishes and silverware gone to?
The shit doesn’t get up and walk away, saying, “Screw this crazy house, I’m outtie!” Or, maybe, it does? Maybe my kids have some magical napkin like Doc McStuffin’s stethoscope, which can bring my kitchenware to life. I bet they’re having secret powwows in the darkest corner of my basement to plot a house-wide takeover and call a mutiny on the living room sofas for supporting the fat assess of the humans who neglect their responsibilities. Wherever my dishes are, they sure aren’t in my cupboards and drawers where they belong.

I’ve thought about setting up a hidden camera in my kitchen. Wouldn’t it be great to catch the perpetrator in the act? Everything disappears so slowly, so randomly, though, that I would have to watch a lot of days worth of footage to figure it out. Probably a few weeks worth, even. If I had the amount of time to waste away that it would take to watch a replay of every moment from my kitchen’s point of view until I find a clue or the culprit, you can bet your sweet ass I am not going to spend it like that. I’ve got a list of better things to do with undiscovered free time longer than my arm, and no where on it is it listed that I’ll waste days of my life away from my family watching replays of my family from an outsiders standpoint. This mom is overworked, underpaid, disrespected, and invalued enough. Not going to relive it all for some stinking kitchenware. Hell naw! I just want to know….

Why me? Why MY dishes and shit? Where in this gawd-damn freaking universe has it all gone? Will it ever just freaking stop so I can save my sanity?

There’s got to be another way to save my silverware from the universe, save my dishes from obliteration. I can’t think of one, but I know there must be. Some sort of explanation, whether it be plausible or far-fetched matters not to me, to ease my psychotic level of paranoid mind. I’m living in fear that one morning, when I finally wake up feeling rested and refreshed after a full ten hours of uninterrupted beauty sleep, shower peacefully with all the hot water I desire, get dressed in the latest fashion without wrinkles or stains, set my fabulously died and styled hair without fighting kids to not spray themselves in the eyes with hair spray, apply department store quality makeup to my bagless, dark circle-free face, and feel amazingly beautiful in my sculpted by plastic surgery body, I’ll waltz into my kitchen and find my cupboards and drawers completely bare of all eating utensils. Looking over my shoulder constantly, wanting the answer to my dilemma to enlighten me, solving this mystery once and for all. It still hasn’t come.

So, I guess I’m stuck living this nightmare of absconding dishes and silverware for as long as it happens. Unless the culprit suddenly names itself, so I can plan a way to banish it’s presence from my home, forever. Until then, I’m only replacing lost items with disposable paper and plastic picnicware. Sorry environment, but my sanity and wallet trump a growing garbage dump, only but momentarily. I’m not going to keep shelling out fifty dollars, or so, every couple of months to replace all which is lost, gone, adios, and vamoose of this place. What I will do, though, is ask you one last time…..
What in the name of hell could be taking my gawdamn dishes and silverware!?!? Where the fuq have all of my dishes and silverware gone? Why me? Why MY dishes and shit? Where in this gawd-damn freaking universe has it all gone to? Will it ever just freaking stop so I can save my sanity? I just want my kitchenware to stay put. It’s that so much for me to ask?! Really!?!

By: Kristina Hammer, aka, The Angrivated Mom

It’s Not Shark Week If You’re More Like Eeyore Than A Shark

The prelude to shark week is always a rough time for me. The standard PMS symptoms on an average scale would be an absolute delight to “suffer” from but, NOPE. I’m not that lucky. Not at all. I’m not even lucky enough to suffer from extreme cramps, because magical pills prescribed by a physician can make the pain tolerable. (Not that it’s lucky for anyone who does suffer from them, though. Don’t get me wrong there.)

Except for the obvious correlation between the loss of blood during menstruating and the bloody waters from a dying animal in a shark attack, there’s no other similarities between them. My Shark Week is more like Eeyore Week. It’s like my body decides to forego the bloating, the headaches, the cramping, and the irritability with a gloomy version of my Depression on steroids. There’s no avoiding it. No escaping it’s havoc and hell every month. For those around me, I am deeply sorry for all that I put you through during that womanly time.

While everyone else is holed up, curled tightly in a fetal position on their beds writing in pain, I’m doing the same, but for no other reason than my brain thinks it’s all just the end of the world. My feelings become hyperalert and overly sensitive. I take everything personally and overreact with full-on waterworks. My mind goes through some sort of grieving sensation, turning my perspective gray, everything is all doom and gloom. It’s like I’m thirteen and being shunned by my bff on the same day the boy I liked asked out the pretty girl.

When I get like this, I can’t bear to face even my children. I wish I could find a dark, but warm and cozy, cave somewhere far away from anyone who knows me and live anonymously in seclusion. The sound of my own voice is pitifully grating to my ears. Enough so, that I want to stop sobbing long enough to rage upon myself for daring to speak. Yet, I have to. There’s no running off into the safety of anonymity when Eeyore Week comes creeping in. Just for that, I sulk, instead. Another characteristic that aids in making me the farthest thing from sunshine, roses, sugar, and spice, and all those other damned nice things that I’m supposed to be made of.

My poor, poor family suffers. Miserably. They know that whatever it may be that they need from me, I’m going to turn it into a reason to cry until I hyperventilate. Or lose my shit completely like some crazy batshit dance or piano mom. Maybe even one of those spelling bee kid’s mom after they’ve needed up the easiest of beginner words from the pressure she’s put on them. I don’t want to be this way. Not for a second.

Nothing I’ve tried seems to help it much. Antidepressants only intensify what is already amplified a thousand times over. Anti-psychotics caused real psychosis and suicidal behavior. Anti-anxiety meds only turn me into an ornery bitch ready to snap someone’s neck. Getting through this week before my period is excruciatingly difficult, but I have no choice. I’ve learned to withdraw within myself during quiet moments and drown myself out when it’s chaos in my household. I get by with a little help from my own inner strength and the love for life and my family that usually is more than enough fuel to pilot me forward.

Plus, I countdown the months until I’m in menopause age range every night before I go to bed during my Eeyore Week. Only then will this damn crazy curse of a PMS finally be cured….. but, then again, who knows what the stars will have in store to replace the angrivation of this horridly dreadful aspect of my body’s twisted version of pre-menstrual-syndrome.

#SundayConfessions
#MoreThanCheeseAndBeer
#AnonymousTopicPrompt

Dear Hubs, Money Isn’t Everything. Just Smile For The Camera And Say “Cheese!”

There’s one thing in my marriage that could drive a wedge between my husband and I instantly. That’s money. Not in your typical he makes less than she spends, or, you both racked up too much credit and can’t catch up kind of way. In your “he worries way too much over future unknowns, sacrifices his happiness in the present to do so and his wife is exactly the opposite” kind of way. Everyone wants financial security. No matter what income class you find yourself in, the money will never be enough. You’ll always want more. That’s why they say money is the root of all evil. It’s the worst invention made by humans in the entire existence of life on earth. It’s the cause of all of my husband’s problems and stress. His depression and anxiety, too. Even his moods are directly related to money somehow.

Throughout our relationship, it’s always been me who has suffered through depressive episodes, causing the waves to ripple effect onto all those living with or emotionally close to me. And it’s always been my husband who has stood by struggling to comprehend how I could possibly be lost within a darkness inside myself. Now the roles are similarly reversed, the only difference being that his depression is a secondary affect stemming from his anxiety disorder going off the rails. There’s a known trigger behind what’s going on with him. Money. He wants to be rich. He wants an easier life. He wants to own things, buy things, travel, and just live simply without worrying about being in shut-off status with our utilities or over-drafting our bank account in order to put gas in our vehicle for the week. He hides from the world, embarrassed by his job, his residence, his possessions. Nothing is new enough, nice enough, expensive enough, or fancy enough. Though I completely agree with that last statement, I digress. I’m not letting the fact that we have only what we can afford to have define my happiness. I’ll still stop and say “Cheese” for the camera, even with my low-income neighborhood or hand-me-down furniture in the background, or worse to you yet, my worn out Kmart clearance rack clothing.

Listen up, honey! It’s NOT going to happen for us any different than it is, anytime soon. So, PLEASE, just take the advice of your daughters (and that irritating Elsa) to heart and LET IT GO!!!!

First of all, the grass is never greener on the other side, no matter how much you think it will be. Just because there’s enough money to pay the bills effortlessly and have enough left to play around with afterwards, doesn’t make any non-financially motivated problems disappear. The obsession over money has blinded you to other, more meaningful and purposeful problems going on. The kids need raising, regardless of which lawn we’ve got, if any at all. I may be the stay at home mom who knows them in ways that are so disgusting I’d rather trade you for and get the unknowing back, but I don’t have all the answers for how to handle these hooligans and their individualized shortcomings and hiccups along the path to becoming decent, respectable human beings. Money won’t fix the Dunce’s ADD, Bean’s inability to shut her mouth in class, Tee’s Ten-Ager attitude, nor Stinx’s suburban nudist phase.

Second of all, we’re not in a position that threatens the bare necessities of life. We’ve surpassed that part of our journey. We’re in a position to keep a roof over our heads and pay basic utilities with ease. That’s so much more than many others have. Yeah, many, many more have more than us, but that’s their life, not yours, and certainly not ours. Our life is moving along at it’s own pace and we have what we are meant to have. By now, we all know that we’re born into circumstance by what’s meant to be, not what we deserve. No one can tell me that they haven’t seen that meme on Facebook about how if everyone was a doctor, lawyer, moviestar or CEO….there’d be no one to cook at our restaurants, sell our groceries, stock our stores, make our cars and houses, nor deliver our pizzas.

Thirdly, there’s no one to blame for choices we’ve made in our lives that decided the path for our journey, but us. We didn’t have what it took to push the limitations of our circumstances to rise above and do well for ourselves from that start. It took us awhile and some stubborn, stupid mistakes along the way to meeting each other, plus a few more together, just for good measure and all, before we finally figured out where we were going. It’s going to take time, patience and time. A whole lot of hard work and faith, too. Sometimes, we may need to stop and ask for a little help, too, but we’re well on our way. We can’t fret over what life hasn’t brought us yet. Keeping pace towards a better life of any financial gain, great or small. Even if it’s not going to end in millions of dollars, your life is worth everything that money can’t buy- love, happiness, confidence, and friendship. Whatever experiences from the past have interfered with our success as adults, is done and gone. Nothing can change that. All we can do is trudge ahead with our dreams and our heads held high, pushing until we get to where we’re meant to go.

My Two Most Favorite Things In The World

There are a few things in my life that can comfort me when I’m in need of comforting. Not many. I’m such a beautiful disaster of emotions, that the average comforts others find in food, friends, or just a hug, aren’t enough for me. When I’m feeling anything but stable, it takes something with a powerful connection to my soul to bring me peace. And the two things that can do that for me, are my favorite things.

My grandmother, Pauline, is the definition of warmth, love, safety, and home to me. My soul is connected to hers with a bond that’s unique of every other relationship I’ve had in my lifetime. She’s the only person I have ever truly held up on a pedestal, above everyone else in the universe. Her passing away almost eighteen months ago has left an emptiness in my soul, a constant aching to physically feel her and the calming presence she was for me, which made her my favorite person in the world. I spend most of my alone time, which is extremely rare and valuable, reliving memories I have of her, trying to hold tight to times long past. Constantly, I’m seeking her presence around me as spirit, letting me know she’s still with me, and searching for signs of her passed down through genetics to my children by a trait or characteristic typical of her. In a way, it’s soothing for me to do that with my time. I often wish that if only I was a full sensitive, able to feel her around me still…. but that’s another piece of my crazy for another day.

My grandmother always had open arms for anyone in need, and an open house if needed, too. She was like a compass for lost souls to set them straight on their own two feet back down the right path. When I found myself lost as a teenager, she took extra special care to set me on my way again, as she does, back down the straight and narrow. After a few more bumps in the road I finally figured out how to stay on course, all thanks to her wisdom. Living up to the legacy Grandma Pauline set forth in her death is the hardest task I’ve ever undertaken. A woman who survives a gas chamber during her early childhood in a concentration camp, then goes on to live a life without handicap, full of love and compassion despite her own deep scars, is one of miraculous wonderment. She’s a saint in my book. I’m proud to say that she’s MY grandmother. So much so, that I even passed on her name to my oldest daughter by her middle name, making her my most favorite named child. (Just don’t tell the other three kids, mmmkay?)

When I’m in need comfort to the touch, I turn to something that’s been with me just a few months shy of my entire lifetime…. My Silky. That name might sound familiar to those who follow my Facebook page because it’s the name of Bean’s lovie/BLANKIE/thingy. That’s right. They’re one in the same. And my most prized possession, my favorite thing to hold (besides my kiddos). Bean has a replica of my own lovie/blankie from childhood, as I do (still to this day), too, because the real one was lost long ago. The original was actually a ladies dress slip, the kind worn under early ’80’s polyester and shoulder-padded to high heaven house dresses or dress suits. My mother found them easy to wear for nursing me, since this was long before the pregnancy and nursing mother equality movement in clothing apparel. The thin, sleek fabric that gets icy cold to the touch from rustling around, became a familiar fabric to my tiny little hands as they kneaded and rubbed and patted the satisfiers of my hunger; as all nursing infants do to keep the milk flowing. This slip became my lovie, dragged around as I grew from baby to toddler to preschooler. It became my lifeline when my parents divorced and my mother moved out, leaving me with my father. That connection cemented in my brain’s gray matter and locked in Silky as the only acceptable alternative to the comforts normally provided by one’s mama. Silky stayed in my bed with me until long after high school, only putting it away when I moved in with my first serious relationship.

When Bean was just an infant, I was under a great deal of stress in my personal life, so I drug Silky out from storage and began using it’s tried and true methods to center myself because my milk flow was being affected by my inner chaos. Needing that cloth like a stress-ball while my daughter suckled helped us both relax into our special time together, finding peace amidst the turbulence surrounding us. It wasn’t long before her tiny, precious hands sought out the material that calmed her momma and began playing with it as she nursed just the same. These are some of my most favorite memories now. Before I knew it, or was ready, Bean weaned herself, giving me up for the deliciousness of table foods, yet she clung onto Silky, refusing to give me back that piece of my own childhood. Thankfully, we were co-sleeping partners, so I could still get my fix at night. Alas, like all lovies do at some point, Silky went missing one day when Bean was about 3. Never to be seen again. Thirty department stores later, I was unsuccessful in finding any modern undergarment-lingerie material that was even close to feeling like that of Silky, no thanks to the invention of Spanx. So I went to a fabric store and explained my dilemma. That lady thought I was CRAZY!!!! In the end, I was able to find a close, but no cigar, version in a material designed for bathing suit lining. Now we each have our own Silky’s and there’s a yard of extra material in the closet, just in case. And yes, I’m not above sleeping with my silky in my grown-up marital bed….My hubs would rather not lose his sexy time by complaining.

Now you know about two of my most favorite things out of my whole lifetime on this earth. Probably think I’m more insane than ever for it, too! That’s alright, because I know what you are, so what am I? Lol. Sorry. Couldn’t help myself there, after all the reminiscing I’ve done this morning. PeeWee Herman was my favorite show to watch with my Grandma, way back when. After we were done playing Dimestore Poker for keeps. Anyways, I’m curious to know, what are some of your favorite things in life that comfort you when you’re in need? Head on over to my Facebook page and tell me! Then, head over to More Than Cheese and Beer and tell her what your favorite things are, too, because she’s to thank for this contribution to Sunday Confessions! Today’s topic was Favorite.