What Day Is It, What I Know For Sure & #iPPP

What do I know for sure? Jesus, I don't know.  I don't even know what day it is.  I'm all kinds of confused.  

My kids went back to school yesterday after being home from school since December 19th.  I should be doing a dance in my kitchen.  I should be rejoicing.  But instead I feel all mopey and sad.  I don't like the quiet.  I miss them.  What the hell?   I mean seriously, what the hell?  Who am I?  Damn you Polar Vortex, you are really f&*king with me.  

(I know I just broke my own rule about not mentioning the overused Polar Vortex after the kids went back to school, but I promise I won't say it again.)


My kids had a real blast playing with each other, the last week especially. (Click here to watch some of our week.) Hockey games, card games, writing stories, reading aloud to each other, singing the songs from the Frozen soundtrack over and over and over.  It wasn't all perfect.  There were moments when I needed to separate them.  There were moments when I literally had to sacrifice my personal safety and step into the middle of a "tackle" game to break it up before someone got a concussion or a black eye.  I had more than one long talk about having compassion for each other and forgiving one another. 

There was all that, sure.  But there was more spontaneous acts of getting along than I could ever have imagined.  

Yeah, that's the baby pool in the background. They turned it into a pretty sweet fort/snowball fight perch thank you very much.  Which means I can justify not putting it away for the season, right?

Playing our new favorite game 5 Crowns and sipping warm cocoa.  

They got all suited up and took their ice-patch-in-the-backyard hockey game pretty seriously.
I had to run outside on a couple occasions when I heard one scream excitedly "hockey fight!"  

I'm sure next week, life will be a little more back to normal, well as normal as we get anyway.  But I guess what I know for sure this week, right now, is that I love being with my kids and I love watching them love each other.

Here's what else I know for sure this week:

• Four is a really fun age.  Wade is getting cuter & saying a lot of funny stuff.  And just imagine everything he says with the most adorable Cindy-Brady-style lisp. Oh my God! I love it.  You know, when he's not tackling people.

I call this his Macklamore look.  He was playing dress up with Lucy and that's my rabbit coat circa 1981. Yup. I don't know where he's getting the teenage girl duck face from though.

He's so proud. He's all "my work here is done."

• My kids loved the movie Akeelah & the Bee.  We found it on Netflix and it's about spelling bees.  And it's just fabulous.  Even the 4-year-old got into it.  Got Netflix? Got kids? Don't have kids? Check out this movie.  No violence.  A couple swear words.  Great message.

• It's official, Wade can now rack up overdue fines at the library like the rest of the family.  He is a card holder as of yesterday.  All kidding aside (I'm not kidding we all have late fees, we are incapable of turning in books on time), Wade was so excited about getting his card.  So cute.

• What do Nirvana, Adele and Eminem have in common with me?  Um, a stage.  Yeah, that's right we booked the venue for Listen To Your Mother (LTYM) Metro Detroit and it has a pretty amazing history.  On May 4, the show I'm co-producing happens on the same stage that so many artists have been on.  I get chills thinking about it.  Click here to find out more about LTYM Metro Detroit.

• I am sad that SoapNet the channel doesn't exist anymore.

• Writing makes me happy.  Even when it's about sad stuff.  I am so excited that I got to share a story on Mamalode because I love them.  

• I love red wine and I cannot lie.  I am trying to be healthier in 2014.  I stopped eating mostly during the day.  But I refuse to stop having a few glasses of red wine a night week.

• I will be unavailable to talk about anything but award show buzz on Sunday evening.  I didn't even see many/any of the nominated movies, but I love Tina and Amy so much and they are hosting the Golden Globes.  Come play with me on Twitter during the show-@AngelaYBlood.

What do you know for sure (this week)?  C'mon, we're friends, share what you know. 

Leave a comment here or on my Facebook page or on Twitter.

Please come play with me on Instagram @jumpingwithmyfingerscrossed. 

I'm linking up today with my friends Greta from  Gfunkified.com and Robin from FarewellStranger.com for the #iPPP link up.  They host a link up where they encourage people to share "your funny, your yummy, your heartfelt, your favorite photos of the week" from our phones. 

My Truth, Mamalode & Mama Kat

I don't know any other way except real anymore.  I mean I've always been real, but now I'm even more real.  And it is both freeing and scary.  Some people get it, some people don't...and that's cool. 

Source:Pinterest

All I know is that writing, sharing, connecting, laughing and putting my truth out there is how I roll.

Most of the time, it leads to deeper connections with people.  Most of the time I feel a sort of liberation, a free-to-be-me kind of vibe.  

Sometimes all the sharing can help me heal and get through the messy parts, the painful parts, of life.  

Sometimes all the sharing can make me laugh harder and dance more.

Sometimes all the sharing can lead to new opportunities to share more, connect more, get through more and dance more.
For example, the story of mine that was published on Mamalode yesterday.

I was nervous about sharing some of it, even though I already share so much.  But writing it felt good.
And as a huge fan of Mamalode, I just feel so honored and happy to be a part of the storytelling, the sharing, that they do.  

Check out my piece below (click here).

If you feel like sharing it, that would be quite wonderful and so very, very appreciated.


I also shared a more humorous, but very real story of what it's been like in our house the past few days.  We are stuck in a seemingly endless string of snow days, smack dab in the middle of the polar vortex. 

I'm linking up with Mama Kat's Vlogging prompts for this one.  Check it out:

Stuck in the Polar Vortex



(If you are an email subscriber, click here to watch.)

Head on over and check out Mama Kat's Losing It, she is hilarious, click here.

Thank you for reading, watching, sharing, commenting, supporting, laughing with (and at) me and encouraging me.  

The Polar Vortex

Tim went away for the weekend to be alone, to read, to catch up on his sleep.  He does this every year and I think it's great.  I support his need for solitude, I get it.  And sure, maybe I look forward to a weekend to rule over Netflix and pick movies that he would hate and not to feel that I am required to defiantly explain every mood swing I have and get to be in total control over the family schedule.  Yeah, breaks can be good.  

Besides what could go wrong while he's gone for a couple days?

Um, just a Polar Vortex/Blizzard that freaked out half the country.  
And a sex talk that I was completely unprepared to have.  

I don't want to write too much about the specifics of the talk because I don't want to embarrass anyone (mostly me).  But Friday night just as I settled in to catch up on the Real Housewives of Atlanta and Beverly Hills, one of my older kids came down to talk.  There were questions.  Questions about naked people.  Thank god I had just taken a Tylenol PM so I was a little calmer than normal.  

I had to talk about things like "natural urges" and use anatomically correct names for body parts.  It was surreal and horrifying.  I told the story of the first time I saw a naked man.  My friend Susie* had a much older sister.  That sister had a Play Girl magazine hidden in her room (really? why did she have that? I mean really!).  Susie, a few other girls and I snuck up to her room and took a good look at the magazine.  We screamed in horror and threw the magazine on the floor and ran back downstairs.  I was 10.  I was traumatized.

(*Susie is a fake name used to protect my friend who I am still friends with on Facebook's sister because come on, who wants to be outed for having Play Girl in their room.  I mean really!)

But I also didn't ever talk to anyone about it, ever.  I never asked my parents questions about naked people, sex, bodies and stuff like that.

I did tell my mother when I got my period for the first time.  Reluctantly.  She made a BIG deal about it, told me I was a woman now and that I needed to pick out a special dessert that she would make me in honor of womanhood.  I flipped through the cookbook she gave me and picked a fancy torte.  I picked it because I had never heard of or tried a torte and because it sounded like something a real woman would have.  My mother made the torte and we celebrated my period and my new womanhood as a family.  I was 12.  I was traumatized. (And I have never had a torte since that day.)

I don't want to traumatize my kids. But I can't even say "penis" or "vagina" without smirking.  I mean come on, how am I in charge of this kind of discussion?  I'm the lady whose phone goes off in church and Britney Spears' Toxic starts playing.  I'm the lady that posts silly pictures of herself dancing on YouTube.  Oh shit, I am already so traumatizing my kids.

Looking back, I remember one conversation my father had with me about being a young teenager.  He didn't get into any specifics by any means.  There probably wasn't even a whole lot of eye contact either.  "I would never want to be a teenager again, ever, it's hard," he said to me very seriously.

It is hard, especially the beginning.  When you're all mixed up.  When you're all I want to be a kid, is it okay to still want to be a kid? but what about all these feelings and "natural urges" and oh god I have to watch videos at school and I am I supposed to think this and feel that and I hate everybody and I love this cartoon but why can't I go see that movie just because it has a sex scene I know what that is you know? wait do I know what that is, oh why, what, ugh.  It sucks.

So the other night, I listened, I didn't judge, I explained, I loved.  I channeled every cool TV and movie mom I could think of to pull this off.  I was Diane Keaton in The Family Stone, Phylicia Rashad in The Cosby Show and Sally Field in Brothers & Sisters.  I stayed open-minded and calm.  I might have thrown in a few sentences about the objectification, victimization and over-sexualization of women in our society.  I mean there was an opening to plant the seeds of my liberalism/feminism and you better believe I will always take advantage of that.  But most importantly I was there.  

I hope all my kids come to me and talk about this because I am so ready.  Bring it awkward sex talks, I can handle it (I think).  I love that my kids feel safe and secure enough to talk to me about all the mixed-up-ness of life.  I truly, truly hope that never stops.  

The rest of the weekend was spent surviving the Polar Vortex.

At the library:

The library is one of the best places
in the world in my opinion.

The books I chose kind of sum up 

my whole heart and mind right now.  

And I watched a movie about Frida Kahlo this weekend 

because I know Tim would hate it.

In the snow:

The kids found a patch of ice in the yard and spent hours playing hockey.  And yes, that is an old sprinkler left out from the summer as one of the goal posts.

Tim should be home soon.  He got snowed in for longer than anticipated with the whole Polar Vortex/Blizzard and all.  While I handled things pretty well, I am ready for the break to be over.  I'm ready to settle in and watch whatever we both decide on Netflix and do this whole parenting gig together.