Right away as I heard others read their writing, I thought, “hmmm does my work measure up?  I don’t feel like my writing is any better.  Do I need to write longer stuff, funnier stuff, more creative stuff, more practical stuff, stuff that means something, or stuff that makes you feel more?  What in the world do I have in me to write that is better than what my classmates are writing?”

And so the love, hate, question, ponder, answer situation of writing was born for me.  We all learn to write in school, so we all should have some ability at it.  Is mine good enough to find some readers?  Does anyone want to know what I have to say?

There is more stuff to read than any human can take in, so if someone spends time with my story, what a wonderful compliment.  I love to read and everyday I pass up more stories than I can possibly take in.

Writing has always been hard work for me.  Research was fun and amazing and again, my curiosity is always fulfilled in researching and learning, but to turn that experience around and rewrite it for school took hard work and many late nights and all nighters!

I went to college to major in fashion.  Then when I was halfway through I realized I was either in the wrong college or the wrong industry.  At the time, it seemed to make more sense to change industries, so when the counselor asked me what I was good at, I had to say writing, because that of course was the only thing I did that anyone else was talking about.

So she set me up for a class to learn to write obits!  I excelled at that and thought my career was settled!  Into various journalism and writing classes I went.  Remember this stuff is hard for me, I am not a prolific or happy writer.  It takes a lot of food to get me through a research project or a blog.  It took me 2 years of constant all nighters to do all that writing, because of course I would fritter away the day and only have the night left.  It was grueling and gruesome.

And so of course I also wrote for the university newspaper which was equally as hard as everything else.  I had my weekly column and several stories a week to write.  I hated this and I loved it.  I’m sure every story I wrote was the very last one in, but I always made my deadlines with the best stuff I could think of to say!

And then EDITORS!  What did these people know.  Was it really their job to reword everything I put out there?  Where is my story in there?  Shouldn’t they just have written it themselves?  They took out all my personality, half my research and a good part of the points I was trying to connect along the way.  Didn’t they know that I spent hours & hours on that?  I didn’t pop it out during cooking class!

And then of course I had my cover stories when they told you it’s the best thing we’ve got going this week!  Hallelujah victory.  Until I walked into a building that was being painted one day and wow-ee, the painter had all my cover stories open and laid out to protect the floor with his ladder and paint cans splat in the middle of it.  I guess he didn’t read the important story I spent 12 hours writing and some editor spent 40 seconds rearranging.

This of course caused me to wonder a few things.

So I graduate.  (Another miracle).  And now I better get a job, because my parents are done!  And I need to survive.  So I slurp up all the courage available in my world and call a few local newspapers.  Hey do you need a writer?  I’m a journalist now!

“Oh yes we do!” they would say.  Which thrilled me to hear!  This is easy.  I’m going to get a job.  Yippee!  “Here’s what you do,” they tell me.  “Just send us as many stories as you can.  If we like them, we will use them and we will pay you $10 for each.”  (It was probably $2, but I exaggerate!)

Humph, well that doesn’t sound like fun!  I just wrote 800,000 articles for school and didn’t particularly enjoy any of it.  This is not going to get me my own place & space.  Plus, what if I do all that writing and they don’t like anything?  What if I do all that writing and they publish it anyway?  How would I even know?

So I got a job in TV where all I had to write was promos, press releases, etc.  I specialized in ten second copy (30 words or less) or thirty second copy.  Kinda like Facebook and Twitter!  But back in the day, the pay was rotten!  Especially for women!  The work was long and the reward was absent!  It was fun though!  But work work work all the time.

Early on my parents thought I might have a book in me and so my dad offered me $100 to write a book.  That looked like millions to my meager salary.  But when I got to about page 20, I wore myself out.  And I feared I was getting boring.  Where was the story going?  What was I doing?  And I was working all the time and trying to get somewhere better than where I was.  My energy was zapped.

But the idea was there.  The need was there.  There was even some potential there.

And so with the whole book thought came the whole publishing thought and how would I get accepted or find or link to someone who would give me the time of day and the opportunity?  Since I couldn’t answer that question the passion for the book really was overwhelmed with confusion.

Why would I do something (even though I feel compelled) that would torture me endlessly and that may result in nothing?  And I don’t have a niche that would help me get seen.  I’m just a generic!

And more time goes on.

Now I’m married with children and have other interests and dreams and desires and have no time for any of that.  Now there are so many things in my life that would be prioritized before writing a book, dedicating a year or two that still carries the possibility that nobody would read it or care, makes little sense.  If it’s not to make money or help my family, why do it?  It’s the question that keeps the book from being written.  It’s the reason other tasks take priority.

Still I am possessed and obsessed.

And so I start to blog because I feel compelled. I am occasional, because writing for me is a lot of work (even on the fast days).  Even with my infrequency, they pile up.  And I like them.  They contain a part of me, the slew of stuff circling around in my head.  Slogging along a little bit at a time, somehow, someway there is enough there for a book.  Who will read it?  Don’t know.  But the work is done.  And so that may be entry for me into the world of writing.

Part of my dilemma encompasses the everythingness of what I’m interested in.  I have a huge mess of life experience to share and work with, there is no shortness there.  I want to write fiction and non-fiction, screenplays and Christmas pageants.  I want to cover subjects I know nothing about and subjects that follow me around all day!  I don’t know where to start or where to focus.  I’ve left it too long and there’s so much.

And now so much has changed since the beginning of my time, that I may have a chance.  No longer am I or anybody else dependent on the whims of a publisher.  We can self publish and send it out to the world in book form or digitally.  Still doesn’t mean that anyone will buy it, but it would get out there.  And now there are ways, we don’t have to pay thousands for a radio or television spot, to get the word out, because social media is our new best friend should something happen to go viral.  And if that happens all the others will come in to check it out.

You gotta listen to our radio show where five moms share their book writing adventures, perplexities and stories.  If you want to write and share, this is a great one!

Is this the best blog I can write?  Yep, right at the moment.  If I wait until tomorrow it will be totally different.  But you got me now and this is my story!

Diane Markins has written a book:  “Women in High Def: Boldly Living Your Purposes with Vibrant Clarity”.  Wouldn’t we all like to do that?  And this week it’s free to download.  Just go here and change your life for the better!  http://dianemarkins.com/wihd-free-on-kindle/

Helpful Links:

http://mashable.com/2009/03/01/publish-book/

http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/get-published-sell-my-work

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-10119891-82/self-publishing-a-book-25-things-you-need-to-know/

http://www.ehow.com/how_107987_self-publish-book.html

http://www.lulu.com/blog/2011/08/how-to-publish-a-book-the-modern-way/

http://blog.blurb.com/three-smart-steps-to-promoting-your-self-published-book/

http://www.writing-world.com/dawn/promotion.shtml

http://voices.yahoo.com/top-tips-promoting-self-published-book-9173519.html

http://www.writing-information-and-tips.com/promote-your-self-published-book.html

The playing field is leveling!

Less than a decade ago, there was no way a radio station would put a mom show on the air.  They hired professional talkers to play tunes and keep their audience entertained and they paid huge corporate salaries to these people.  There were lawyers and agents involved and the paychecks got higher, advertising costs skyrocketed and only the hugest of all companies could really afford to advertise their products or services! 

And even they got tired of paying the price.  Agencies who buy media managed the money and got their 15+%.  Lots of money, lots of middle men and only the big and rich could play.

The playing field is leveling.

Enter the mom force.  Moms who want to work, need to work to help support their families and want to do it in their own hours, from their own homes or away in their own time are either finding companies who will hire them to work from home or they’re starting their own businesses and running them in the available hours they have while raising their families.

We started to talk to each other with our blogs, to share our experiences, our pictures, our day.  More and more moms started to do this and more and more of us began to focus our blogs on our interests and our strengths, recipes or organization or design or party planning, or health, fitness, fashion, home and garden.  You name it and we are focusing our blogging on that.

The playing field is leveling.

No longer do we look to the big TV stations for the dreaded news of the day, we share our days with others like us, who we relate to and who respond back to us.  Technology which only corporations with big budgets could afford suddenly became affordable (sort of) for the average family and now with smart phones and apps and laptops and wifi, we can take our work anywhere and do it anytime.  The technology only gets better and it’s very accessible for all.  And a little movement called social networks rose from nowhere and dominate our lives, marketing and businesses.

Where once there were three TV stations in a market, now with cable, there are hundreds.  And now with the internet anyone can create a television show and put it out there.  Same with radio.  Same with the newspapers.  People would rather touch base through Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest.  The choices and the places to go for information are endless and with the right idea and a little luck, we all have a better chance to succeed.

So it makes more and more sense for us entrepreneurial spirits out there to set up shop and start some kind of business for ourselves!  In a lot of ways we really can play with the big guys.  They can still squash our dreams.  But we can still start over.

And then for us moms there’s been a long and historic argument and dilemma of whether to work or whether to stay home and be the primary caretaker’s for our kids.  Do we want to live rich or do we want to live poor?  Do we want to be the primary influence over our kid’s development or farm it out to others?  Whatever we chose made us wrong and set us up for ridicule and set us up for even questioning ourselves and our choices.  A lot of doubt, frustration and angst compounded through generations.

Now in many cases we can have our cake and eat it too.  Woohoo!  Doesn’t mean it’s easy.  Doesn’t always mean that we’ll have the high income that we want, but we have the chance.  We have a touch of freedom and an opportunity for the kids to not look at us as the total disciplinary warden, but as a productive, creative, influential member of the work force, even if it is from a desk at home.  So yet in another way we can be a positive influential example for them.  That is if we conduct ourselves in a professional and positive manner.

I’ve been working at my own businesses since my first pregnancy.  I was fortunate to be able to do some freelance work over the years and although it was lucrative, it was not very consistent.  And with children, it was hard to get out and drum up more.  It was a lot just to get dressed up and out before a mishap occurred.

The whole mom idea dawned on me around the time email came into being.  I was still big on my past career in the television industry and the idea electrified me when I thought to put real moms on TV talking about their experiences raising kids and what went right and wrong and what was working and what was not.  That was long before blog was in our vocabulary and long before any social networks rose to the surface.  There was nothing that I knew about at that point that could connect and help moms feel like we had a place and that our job as moms was legitimate.

In sharing the idea, I certainly learned that most executives had no interest in moms and no idea that we would have anything important to say.  Eventually, like a decade later, I was finally able to put a show on the air.  It was a half hour long, aired on a local television station Monday through Friday for six months.  At that time the trend in television had turned, few new and especially local programs were getting picked up unless we paid, not only for production but for airtime as well.  With little advertising support and all my time and effort going to production, it seemed like a good time to re-evaluate.

But the proof was all around us that moms had something to say and wanted to talk about it.  It was happening in the creation of website after website and social network after social network.  And then I found Toginet Radio where I was able to turn my television concept into a radio show.  And so we continue!

But the new business now that I’m most excited about centers around health and fitness and something I never expected to be a part of.  We were introduced to Body by Vi shakes, loved them and never turned back.  My husband has lost 43 pounds, I’ve lost 14 pounds and counting and even my kids are shaping up and looking better.  We’ve increased our energy and our desire to share this wonderful lifestyle with other people.

It’s built around a 90 day challenge to look good and feel better.  I’ve been introduced to many 90 day challenges in my life, and failed at almost all of them.  But because we have a stake in this, I am a little more dedicated to following.  And because the product is so satisfying and works so well, I am incredibly more dedicated.

So you can participate with us and get the health benefits, just be a customer.  Every business has customers and it’s not a bad thing for business owners to ask for business.  I always buy things from people.  So do you.  But there’s an extra opportunity here.  You can open your own virtual store on the web and use and sell these excellent products as well.  And in this viral world, that’s a good thing going on!

Here’s the thing!  You can’t go wrong!  You can’t be hurt!  It’s $499 to get in the ViSalus business and you get way more than that in products, shakes, vitamins, energy drinks and more.  In addition, and this is the wonderful part, you instantly name your website and there you have it!  Here’s mine:  http://90dayaz.myvi.net.  Yours will be just like it only everything on there will be connected with you!  And then behind the website you have your own business office where you can track everything you are doing.  There’s ads to use, letters to email, all kinds of support materials.  And so that comes with it all, no extra cost!  Do you know the value of that?  I have never built a website for less than thousands of dollars.  Are you following?  A whole business…amazing products, resources, a business plan, website, office, training and support…all available to you.

This is the perfect business.  You can run it from home or wherever you are.  The cost to begin is the cost of the product to use and benefit from.  The cost of shakes is less than $2.00 and that’s where you can save money every month on your family’s meals.  You order product every month, but if you find 3 good customers your product every month is free.  If your customers find 3 customers, their product is free.  It’s a crazy great business to be in.

Transforming my life.  Transforming my family’s lives.  Transforming other’s lives.  That’s why I started the whole mom thing in the first place.  Take a look and join me in the fun.  Catch the wave, you’ll be so glad that you did!

Remember…the playing field is leveling…yes you can do it too, get in the game!

Now take a closer look at my guest moms for this show and what they are doing:

Visit Jackie’s website and see the amazing fitness she’s putting together!

www.bikramyogamesariverview.com  ( 480) 464- YOGA

Visit Karen’s website and see what she’s got going!

Branded Merchandise:  www.take3marketing.com

http://90dayca.myvi.net

Visit Becky’s website and see how she developed her business!

www.gilbertlawoffice.com- Cholewka Law

Visit Jill’s website at Toginet Radio and you could find a spot for your own radio show!

http://toginet.com

Helpful Links:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanblair/2012/08/09/going-from-businessman-to-brand-jay-z-style/

And don’t I know it!  My first big food shock with my kids was making a nice lunch for them, placing it beautifully on a table with matching placemat and dishes and little kid silverware and then watching them not eat it.  It was lunchtime for me, but they weren’t hungry!  So I thought I’d let that lunch sit until they were hungry.  It rarely worked, they had minds of their own and they wanted to pick their own delicacies to eat.

So is the woe of trying to handle somebody else’s eating habits, even at that young age.  How could I possibly have thought I could handle somebody else’s healthy food selections when I can hardly handle my own.

And that may be the key, fix our own first.

I know moms who’ve had to make major diet changes for their children’s health and they took total charge and did it well and then taught their child to do it too.  I think about those moms and think, wow that is a lot of work!  Is our main problem as moms (trying to feed our children) that it’s too much work?

Too much work to work out calorie counts.  Too much work to work out ingredients and inventorying them.  Too much work to set a dinner time and have everybody get there at once.

Really all of these things have been very difficult for me, starting with my husband’s work schedule.  He’s a little bit more regular now on the time he arrives home in the evening, but for years I never knew if he would be called into a last minute meeting, have a late change of plans and have to rework his whole day late into the evening.  For me to meal plan was outrageous.  I know because I gallantly tried it a few times.  I’d plan a week of meals and end up discarding meat that had rotted in the fridge waiting to be cooked.  It was easier to add up who was home and buy directly for them.  In the early days when the house was full of babies and toddlers, they didn’t eat much anyway.  We ate light.

As the kids got old enough to enroll in activities, it just so happened that they were all always scheduled at night.  All the kids, all the activities, all the nights and everyone coming and going at all times, when could I have dinner hot & ready for all?  Pretty impossible.  My best bet was always the crockpot, but that involved planning as much as a day ahead.  Sounds easy, but it’s not.  When I could manage that, that worked out the best.

But just because I’m cooking dinner at home instead of doing what’s easy and driving through somewhere, doesn’t mean really that it’s one bit healthier.  It also doesn’t mean it’s cheaper.  If I can buy a dozen tacos at Taco Bell for $10 and feed my family, that’s something that I couldn’t achieve buying the ingredients in the store and taking an hour to make them myself at home.

And what’s this whole organic thing we’re all so buzzed about?  It used to be that everything was organic.  Now it’s only organic if it’s raised on a family farm somewhere.  But how do I know when I’m in the store if the lettuce in my hand is really organic or just marked up in price?  How do I know the loader guy put the organic products in the right slot?  That’s a lot of trusting going on!

The best information I’ve ever gotten on dieting was to eat things with the fewest ingredients, so an apple is great, applesauce gets a little more dicey, apple pie a la mode with whipped cream and sprinkles gets even more suspect.

I also believe that what you eat the most is what you crave the most.  When I’m eating m&m’s, chips and brownies, those are the things I crave.  If I eat dessert on a regular basis, I expect and need dessert on a regular basis.  If I start eating salads every day for lunch, pretty soon that’s what I look for at lunchtime, a salad.  I don’t know if that’s more inherent to my nature or if everybody is a bit like that.  We tend to find the things we like though and go back again & again for them.

I picked up dinner last night from Chick fil A.  I know, I know, that was the easy route, but since I’ve taken that route many times before, I didn’t even need to ask what everyone wanted.  We all crave what we usually order when we go there.  I came home with 3 chicken sandwiches, no pickles, 2 spicy chicken sandwiches, no pickles, 1 chicken salad sandwich, and a large chicken soup.  So is my family like me because I’ve taught them this, or again, is it human nature to crave what we’re used to?

My husband and I have been on countless diets and countless forays into healthier eating and I’ve gotta say those took total attention and took over our lifestyle.  It was so much work, we quickly gave in.  My husband has tried this more often than I and I find it easier to focus on his health than both of ours.  Mine is just too much to worry about.  On top of it, the kids are not interested in fish and salad every night.  They have gotten to the point where they will eat a lot of different things, but the things they like best are the least healthy.

That’s when healthy becomes a bad word and a turn off…more expensive, yukky tasting and non-filling.

But we just found out about something that so far has been working for us!  It’s a system of shakes that you can drink and substitute for any number of meals, the more meals you substitute for the better the outcome.  But these shakes are chock full of the vitamins we need for energy and optimal health.  In less than 2 weeks my husband lost 21 pounds.  It’s coming off far slower for me, but I’ve been eating badly for a long time and being an aging female the fact that I’m losing anything at all is amazing.  So here’s the link for the product we are using.  If you’re looking for healthy and fit try the 90dayaz challenge with us.  And let’s compare notes in 3 months.  Here’s to looking good and feeling great all summer long!

Now instead of buying frappucino’s and routing around for chocolate, the shakes substitute beautifully.  I feel satisfied.  I get what I want.

And when it comes to the kids, they’re older now.  They have their own cravings and attitudes about eating.  No matter what I have in the house to eat, it’s not good enough.  If I have fruits and veggies and breads to snack on, they want cookies and brownies and yogurt.  If I have the reverse items in the house, they are looking for the fruit and veggies.  They are teenagers and even when it comes to food, everything I do is wrong.

I’m feeling a sense of relief that they can find their own food and be responsible for their own health.  I may not have given them a brilliant start to health, but who knows.  They may see where I went wrong and right the ship.  Or if I had been good and faithful and healthy all along and then set them free only to discover m&m’s, all my direction could be caught up in the wind.  They are their own people.  They will learn and discover themselves, compare it to what we did and learned and discover, hopefully, what works best for them.  We have them for a short time, they suffer from our shortcomings, but all too soon the decision is there’s.  We learn from the good and the bad, what we like and what we don’t like.  We will always be our own persons.

There is a good quote out there that speaks to when we are young we risk our health to create our wealth.  Then when we are old, we spend our wealth to regain our health.  Maybe we can work on both of those together.  Take a look at this 90dayaz challenge.

These are the decisions we make.

Helpful Links:

http://women.webmd.com/guide/nutrition-101-how-to-eat-healthy

http://www.helpguide.org/life/healthy_eating_diet.htm

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/tips-for-healthy-eating/MY01695

http://www.whfoods.com/foodstoc.php

But I can’t say that it’s been truly malicious, they just wanted something from me.  They either wanted to hurt my feelings or embarrass me, guilt me or take more than I had to give.  And how do I respond when this happens?  I give in.  They get what they want.  If I want to deal with them, then basically they get what they want.

So then I wonder if I too am a bully.  My kids get really upset with me when I try to bully a salesperson to hurry up, just put it in the bag, or if I try to bully the orthodontist back by telling them they’re ripping me off, or if I try to give somebody else an idea on how to do things better.  I find it interesting that my kids are so nice, they are bothered by my badness.  But usually I’m bad for a reason.  I’m mad and I’m not going to take it anymore.

What that says to me is that while I let others bully me, I will sometimes try to be the bully myself.  I have little patience for people who take up my time (they are slow) or people who tell me something can’t be done.  Then my little bully comes out.

Can any of us say, we’ve never been a bully?

It usually seems like we view ourselves in a hierarchy, people we view as better than us and people we view as lower than us.  For whatever reason, wealth, health, accomplishment, beauty, status, talent, the people who have a greater abundance of it than we have, get to bully us and the people we view who have less of it than we have, we either don’t care about or choose to bully unto.

And then there are degrees of bullying.

It seems to me in this world of bullies, it’s up to us as parents to give our kids huge healthy doses of self esteem.  And how does that happen?  Praise, true and honest from our heart.  It’s looking for their good qualities and abilities, recognizing them and helping them grow and build them.  It’s praising them more for what they do right.  And when we catch them doing something wrong, we can correct them without demoralizing them.  It’s loving them for who they are completely, voicing that, and creating an environment where love is felt.  And doing it from the day they are born.  If we do this in love and with the right intent, I believe they can grow up with a sense of self esteem, but also with humility.

We take pride in their achievements, but we should also take pride in their failures for that’s where their learning and growth gets its strength.  As parents sometimes we expect victory in every act.  That’s a great expectation that will hurt everyone involved.

I think of my girls and their teams and the moms pushing to have their daughters  be the best and be the captain and then the girls who are captains are the tyrants and the bullies.  They will hold themselves in such high esteem, they never realize that nobody else does.  In the frenzy to have it all, we forget we are walking a tightrope and balance is the key to handling it well.  In this case that, in my mind, would be self confidence and humility.

Without the self confidence, it would be very easy to get bullied, people can spot that a mile away, we would never ever stand up for ourselves, never claim what’s ours or try to negotiate, just take whatever the other person dishes out.  Take the abuse so long that it results in even lower self esteem.  We have to think pretty highly of ourselves to go up against a bully, but once they have us down, it’s nearly impossible to dredge up enough confidence to have a go at them.  And that’s when bullying gets really nasty.

Imagine holding your new precious baby in your arms.  The love is lavish and instant.  And we look at that beautiful innocent baby, say a prayer and promise them everything.  From that moment on we will do anything, fight anybody, climb any mountain to bring that amazing baby happiness and an easy life.  But then life gets in the way.  The baby starts to toddle around and doesn’t hold on to our leg as long.  Pretty soon they toddle off and find their own fun.  We get busy.  We forget to look and hold and protect.  We ignore their insecurities and some of their needs.  We have more things to worry about than we ever imagined, and we think they’re doing okay.  Sometimes we forget to notice.  Or maybe we notice, but we don’t ask.

After seeing the movie “Bully”, it left me with the over-riding thought that we are all to blame.  And we are all looking for someone else to blame.  The parents were going to the school for help, the school administrators seemed to shrug it off and send them home.  The parents asked their son what was going on.  And when he didn’t say anything, they grilled him, warned him that he better stand up for himself, acted disgusted and let it go.  When all I wanted to see them do was take him in their arms and tell him how much they loved him and how important and wonderful he was in their lives.  Instead of building him up, I got the impression they were bullying him too.

Then when they found out how bad the bullying was, they went to the school, the mom and dad and their two little children.  The mom explained what was happening, the dad said not a word the whole time and then the administrator they talked with got up and walked them out when they were obviously not finished.  The parents were bullied by the administration, an administration that was probably pointing the finger back at them.

Is this why the problem of bullying goes on and on, gets worse and worse and never gets solved?  We all think it’s up to somebody else to fix.  We have the power to do something.  And somebody needs to stand up and bully the bullies.

Who ends up being a bully?  Kids who are bullied at home.  Kids who are unhappy or bored or ignored at home.  Kids who have an over inflated ego and think they are better than others.  It has to be something at home that influences that.  Maybe they watch their parents be bullies.  There are plenty of those, boy do I know!

And so maybe the bullies are victims too.  The statistics do point to the fact that most bad bullies end up in big trouble with the law when they are older, so they are going down a bad path.  It is in their best future interest that somebody can stop and correct them.

They say that the best thing a bully victim can do is stand up for themselves.  This has worked for a lot of people, but yet it seems like a very difficult task when the kids being bullied are already feeling inferior and weaker.  And that’s exactly why it leads to the dramatic kind of Columbine event when the bullied kids get their fill and take action.

When we stand up for ourselves it seems better to do it early when the bully takes his first strike.  That would put an end to it especially when done with confidence and ego.  Those are the two absolute qualities needed.  And they’re needed before the bully can destroy them.

I was thinking the other day of what it is in somebody that draws the bullies to harass them, because some people just seem like more of a target.  So I think, well they’d never target a star athlete especially in a brute sport like football.  They’d never target somebody who works out all the time and is physically stronger.  They probably wouldn’t target someone who is pretty good looking and buff.  They are looking for what’s weak in a person, not what’s strong.

And then I think about Tim Tebow who’s been a star football player all his life.  He works out and works hard to be better than his peers.  He’s handsome.  He’s famous.  So why is he the most harassed, tormented and bullied person in sports?  I mean really, he is bullied by broadcasters, coaches, athletes, fans, writers, photographers, any and everybody in the football arena or any sports arena or even in the world in general.

People love to see others succeed, they just don’t like them to succeed too much.  We watch star after star, athlete after athlete, singer after singer, famous person after famous person rise high in the eyes of society and then boom.  Either through a mistake made or something they say or a belief they have, somebody doesn’t like it and the destruction of the person through the media and through our individual conversations, we bring them down.  Like crabs in a pot, we don’t cheer too long for their success before we’re pulling them down so we can look taller and better.

I don’t understand why the media and the public have it in for Tim Tebow.  I don’t see the same flaws they see.  But for whatever reason they don’t want him on the playing field.  They bully him endlessly and in the most ridiculous ways.  We cheer on other people who break barriers and do what’s never been done before.  But for some reason they taunt Tim Tebow, he’s too tall, too muscular, too religious, too physical, too whatever to be a good quarterback.  Yet from what I’ve seen, he looks better than most of the quarterbacks out there.

What I hate about bullies is their ability to rally a crowd.  The crowd may not even agree with them, but they’re there to support them.  It seems like it’s the sports media that has generated this story about Tim Tebow, they fuel it and flaunt it and convince their loyal fans that they’re right and pretty soon, he gets harassed just for showing up.  Anybody can be bullied.

It’s not pretty.

We kinda have a thing for bullies.  We’re drawn to shows on TV where people pour out their talent and then have to listen to people judge them.  We even like to side with the meaner judges as though mean means right.  It’s an interesting tendency to study.

If our tendency as a society is to believe and follow and side with the bullies, then how are we going to stop bullying in the schools and anywhere else?  How can we threaten bullies to stop bullying when they turn around and watch it successfully happen on TV?

How can we solve a problem that so many people are proud of?  If we hold the bullies in esteem and peg the bullied to being less than, this is a problem that can only grow.

My thoughts are running in a vicious circle and there are still a million and one things to be said.  The bullies, the bullied and the sheep that follow.  Who are you?  Who am I?

On the tightrope.

Self confidence…humility.

And a little bit of mercy can go a long way.

“Little girls are cute and small only to adults.  To one another they are not cute.  They are life-sized.”  ~Margaret Atwood

Helpful Links:

http://www.rachelsimmons.com/2012/03/the-mommy-vortex-why-do-we-have-to-be-so-mean/

http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/problems/bullies.html

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/tc/bullying-topic-overview

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/04/bully-movie-2/

http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/friends/bullies/

http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/friends/bullies/

http://www.makebeatsnotbeatdowns.org/facts_new.html

http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/bullying

Back in the day, it was such a treat to stop at a bookstore and rummage around among old and new books, pile up the discoveries and head home with all new reads.  I could smell it, feel it, enjoy the touch and the sounds of almost any bookstore.  What a great way to spend an hour or a day or a weekend, ensconced between bookcases, full of unread stories.

The books have piled up over the years!  And in answer to all that weight, my husband got the brilliant idea to buy me an ipad.  And now I can wander all the books available on the internet anytime, the store is always open and the story always awaits!

What I love best about my ipad is that all my books are in hand in one place at one time.  I can take along one small, lightweight object and all my books are there for me, thousands of pounds of them.

I generally keep a couple books going at a time, but I try to only open one at a time on my ipad.  Otherwise I’d be into everything and confusion would reign.  I keep another book going on my cell phone to alleviate stress and feel like I’m accomplishing something as I wait.  Most of the time I do have my cell phone with me, I don’t always have the ipad on hand.  And then there are places I just like to take a real book… to the beach, to the nail or hair salon… just in case, I don’t want my electronic device to get ruined or lost.

As a mom, it’s not easy to read.  As an employee, it’s not easy to read.  Somehow I always feel guilty if I steal that time for myself.  The attitude I feel around me is that reading may be fun or entertaining and I ought to be working and accomplishing something.  Or that reading isn’t getting the job done, it’s a diversion, preventing me from ever accomplishing the task at hand.

The reason I know I’m not reading too many books?  I keep longing for a longer list of books.  When I get to my max, my automatic interest system will shut down and I’ll move on to other things.  But for now, I find the time to read at night before I fall asleep, in the morning when we go to work out (I plop on a bike and think I’m multi-tasking), when I’m waiting, during those short windows of time between dropping off one kid and picking up another.  Sometimes I read while watching TV or on a good day take a 1/2 hour during morning coffee or lunch to make some headway.  It all adds up and my pile of finished books escalates rather quickly, just not as quickly as the new bunch of books gets added on.

I like lots of books, though my patience for bad writing or books that don’t move me has increased incredibly.  There’s just too many good books out there and not enough time to enjoy them.  I’d rather be turning the pages of a great story than falling asleep with a boring one.

I love it when the stories in certain books come together to create new awareness within me.  This has happened to me especially in the case of how women have been treated throughout history.  I have read Mary: Mrs A Lincoln, Sophia Tolstoy, Louisa May Alcott and Harper Lee.  The first of those books was fiction based on a biography, so I read that biography to get the “true” story.  I am entranced by the ideas and what I’m learning from the lives these women led.

The joy of reading for me comes from the joy of discovery.  And I can receive that just as much reading fiction as true stories.  Now using my ipad, I can highlight those beautifully written sentences or points that make sense to me.  I highlight, bookmark and even comment when I think I won’t remember why something hit me the way it did.  It’s so nice to have that to go back to.  I never wanted to mark up my paper editions, but I feel like if I don’t mark up a book on my ipad that it meant nothing to me.  That’s not true, but I still like to find the statement that hits the mark for me.

Finding good books is almost as joyful as reading them.  The best way for me to learn about good books is to ask my friends what they’re reading.  That way I get a good idea of what books they like.  By now I’ve been able to separate out a few friends where everything they suggest, I like too.  Those are the people I watch like a hawk.  And I love the book club I go to!  What’s great is there are so many people who love to read, presenting their favorites or books they’ve found, and I can take down titles of books that may never have crossed my path.

I think books are important.  I can’t take them with me when I die, but I can live my life more brilliantly with the light they turn on in me!  And I truly believe that the person I am is a result of the books I read and the people I keep company with.  My choices are many, but they better be good.

Enjoy the book list compiled by each of the moms on the show and one mom who couldn’t be on the show.  And please add your own suggestions!

“Wear the old coat and buy the new book.”

- Austin Phelps

Book List from Sue 

Recent books I’ve finished

One Moment, One Morning – Sarah Rayner

Oxygen: A Novel – Carol Cassella

Code to Zero – Ken Follett

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror & an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin – Erik Larson

Books I’m reading now

The Lucky One – Nicholas Sparks

Books on my list to read soon

Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently – John Maxwell

Same Kind of Different As Me – Ron Hall & Denver Moore

The Paris Wife – Paula McLain

109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos – Jennet Conant

Favorite all time books

Moloka’i – Alan Brennert

Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith

Still Alice – Lisa Genova

The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett

World Without End – Ken Follett

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot

Book List from Jerilyn

Recent books I’ve finished

The Hunger Games Trilogy (books 1 & 2) – Suzanne Collins

Soul Surfer – Bethany Hamilton

Kisses from Katie – Katie Davis

Books I’m reading now

The Hunger Games – book 3 – Suzanne Collins

Love and Respect – Emmerson Eggichs

Do Yourself a Favor and Forgive – Joyce Meyer

Books on my list to read soon

Blessed Beyond Measure – Gloria Copland

Heaven is Here – Stephanie Nielson

Favorite all time books

Bible

Redeeming Love – Francine Rivers

Choosing to See – Marybeth Chapman

Life Without Limits – Nick Vijicic

Heaven is for Real – Todd Burpo

Book List from Melissa

Recent books I’ve finished

I Used to Be So Organized – Glynnis Whitwer

The Beautiful Wife: Focused on Christ, Fulfilled in Marriage – Sandy Ralya

Sweeter Than Birdsong – Rosslyn Elliott

Books I’m reading now

Growing Great Kids – Kate Batistelli

Real Marriage – Mark & Grace Driscoll

LeadHer Devotional Challenge – LeadHer Team

Power Thoughts – Joyce Meyer

Books on my list to read soon

Good Girls Don’t have to Dress Bad – Shari Braendel

God, Grace & Girlfriends – Mary Snyder

String of Pearls – Diane Woodman Bailey

One Year Alone with God – Ava Pennington

The Mission Minded Family – Ann Dunagan

Favorite all time books

Bible, NLT version

Visioneering – Andy Stanley

The Five Love Languages of Children – Gary Chapman

My Utmost for His Highest – Oswald Chambers

Jesus Calling – Sarah Young

The Hole in our Gospel – Richard Stearns

God Chicks – Holly Wagner

Redeeming Love – Francine Rivers

Talent is Never Enough – John Maxwell

Jesus, Life Coach – Laurie Beth Jones

Book List from Tara

Recent books I’ve finished

Killing Lincoln – Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard

The Lincoln Lawyer – Michael Connelly

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

Girl who Played with Fire – Stieg Larsson

Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest – Stieg Larsson

Little Red Book of Selling – Jeffrey Gitomer

Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card

Books I’m reading now

Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson

A Discovery of Witches – Deborah E. Harkness

Automatic Wealth for Graduates – Michael Masterson & Mark Skousen

Onboarding:  How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time -  George B. Bradt

Books on my list to read soon

Children of the Mind – Orson Scott Card

Favorite all time books

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

The Hunger Games Series – Suzanne Collins

The Harry Potter Series – J.K. Rowling

Honor Among Thieves – Jeffrey Archer

Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

The Firm – John Grisham

The House at Pooh Corner – A.A. Milne

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis

Book List from Carly

Recent books I’ve finished

The Lucky One – Nicholas Sparks

Books I’m reading now

Lineage of Grace – Francine Rivers

Favorite all time books

All Creatures Great & Small – James Herriot

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

The Holy Bible

Book List from Vicki

Recent books I’ve finished

The Hundred Foot Journey – Richard C. Morais

How to Eat a Small Country – Amy Finley

Still – Lauren Winner

Angry Conversations with God – Susan E. Isaacs

Books I’m reading now

Forgotten Country – Catherine Chung

Books on my list to read soon

Behind the Beautiful Forevers – Katherine Boo

Great Young Adult books

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

Between Shades of Gray – Ruta Sepetys

Favorite all time books

The Glass Castle – Jeanette Walls

Little Bee – Chris Cleave

Vicki says:  To find good books, I read lots of reviews and then download sample chapters on my iPad. This has been GREAT!  Before, I often bought books that others recommended or that had great looking covers and was often disappointed because it was too predictable, too boring, had too much sex or was just downright mediocre. With iTunes, I get about 40 pages to sample before purchasing a book. By reading the first couple of chapters I can pretty much peg whether it’s going to be a good book or not.

Vicki’s the author of a great list of books, for more information, click here:  http://www.vickikuyper.com/books.php

Book List from Sharon

Recent books I’ve finished

Even Silence Has An End – Ingrid Betancourt

Girl in Translation – Jean Kwok

Sophia Tolstoy – Alexandra Popoff

I’ve Got Your Number – Sophie Kinsella

Thinking for a Change – John Maxwell

The Sibling Effect – Jeffrey Kluger

Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt – Beth Hoffman

The Weird Sisters – Eleanor Brown

Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith

Heft – Liz Moore

Books I’m reading now

Nearing Home – Billy Graham

The Art of Fielding – Chad Harbach

Louisa May Alcott – Susan Cheever

Bel Canto – Ann Pachett

Books on my list to read soon

Bringing Up Bebe – Pamela Druckerman

Defending Jacob – William Landay

Imagine – Jonah Lehrer

Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer

My Name is Mary Sutter – Robin Oliveira

One Moment, One Morning – Sarah Rayner

The Winter Sea – Susanna Kearsley

Favorite all time books

The Time Travelers Wife – Audrey Neffenegger

The Postmistress – Sarah Blake

Shanghai Girls & Dreams of Joy – Lisa See

Unbroken – Laura Hillenbrand

Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson

Mary Mrs A Lincoln – Janis Cooke Newman

Sophia Tolstoy – Alexandra Popoff

The Forgotten Garden – Kate Morton

The Distant Hours – Kate Morton

I Don’t Know How She Does It – Allison Pearson

Bright Shiny Morning – James Frey

The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver

The Imperfectionists – Tom Rachman

Outlander Series – Diana Gabaldon

That cast the picture for me of pretty much pulling them out of the car seat and transferring them directly into the drivers seat.  Because I’ve seen some of those high school girls and they are tiny tiny little things, they have hair that is heavier than they are.  They could very well fit car seat criteria.

There is so much to think about with kids in the car.  We think we have it made in the shade when we set our little baby in that $100 car seat.  All 5 of my kids hated that thing and cried constantly in it for the first six months.  But that’s not the point, I’m thinking about the fact that my husband’s car doesn’t have a car seat and well he’ll be driving that baby sometimes…another car seat.  Oh and then Auntie or Grandma’s going to be picking one up from daycare.  Do I take my seat out and leave it or get them their own to use as well?

And just when all those questions have been answered, boom, baby #2 enters the picture and car seat #1 is outdated, filthy or just not feasible in some other way.  Baby #1 no longer fits in seat #1 so now for $200 we need to buy two new carseats.  What about my husband’s car?  And Grandma’s or Aunties?  It’s the car seat shuffle and it starts to get even more interesting when baby #3 lands on earth!  Yikes they all have to move up and the big one has to move back to the far back seat.  Oh and would the kid who has houdini’d himself out of the car seat and is standing up in it…PLEASE sit down!!!  And other child please stop encouraging that with your laughter!

When my baby #4 came along, legally our 5 year old could get out of the car seat and he did, but still a carful of car seats.  We were the fastest loading car seaters in town, but it was still no easy task.  By the time baby #5 got out of the car seat, we’d had them in our cars for 14 years.

How can you talk about kids in the car without mentioning food?  In the early days, it seems like we did everything in the car and oh it was so much easier to drive through and throw a bag of food into the back seat.  The kids (in their car seats of course) would tackle it like piranhas.  Once they discovered McDonalds, it was manna from heaven.  No other food type would do.  No other happy meal toy would do.  But the collection of cups and straws and frys on the floor of the car was so thick, it was like stomping grapes when the kids made their way in and out of the car.  My arms were always full of whatever had to be brought in the house, I never bothered to clean up either.  My husband was flabbergasted by the filth.  He could not possibly conceive of how it got so bad.  Finding the areas where the bottom fell out of the cups was always a treat too!

Imagine driving while all that havoc is going on behind you?  There are statistics I suppose on drinking and driving, there must be statistics on texting and driving, but are there any statistics on moms driving with kids in the car?  Are we a hazard or do we somehow manage to make that look effortless too?  Are we able to manage our way through mayhem in the backseat without incident or accident?  If so we truly are super moms…or God blessed!

Some of my kids are driving on their own now, they’re bigger and better behaved now when they’re with me.  TV in the car has come a long way since it began in the days when my kids were little.  The first one we bought was in a console that fit between the two front seats.  I had to half stand on my head to insert the VHS tape and all the kids had to crane their necks to find the 5” monitor!  And imagine the large pile of VHS tapes flying around the car!  Now I see cars go by with separate monitors on the back of each seat right at eye level.  I bet moms can insert the DVD right from the driver’s seat without the slightest contortion!  Ahhh, modern day technology.  What will it be in the next 10 years for our convenience?  Or the next 50 years?

Maybe like everything else technology is helping moms overcome the back of the car craziness.  Maybe kids in the car are less of an issue and less of a hazard.  If the whole family car ride is getting safer, than I can get happier and breathe a sigh of relief that we all made it through!

Next hazard!  Driver’s Ed!

Helpful Links:

http://phoenix.about.com/od/parenting/a/childseat.htm

http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/childsafety_laws.html

http://fatherhood.about.com/od/dadsandteens/a/teach_driving.htm

http://www.teachyourkidhowtodrive.com/

Doesn’t bedtime start at the beginning?  As soon as we bring that precious baby home, one of the first questions we’re faced with is where will this baby sleep?  All too often we  might go awry early trying to make the middle of the night feedings easier.  Because it is just easier if the baby sleeps close to us, either in a little bassinet or in our bed.  Does anybody let an infant sleep in their bed?  Seems too dangerous, too much chance of actually crushing the baby.  But I remember a lot of early mornings when I was exhausted bringing the baby in about 5 am for my husband to hold.  He set the baby chest to chest and they both slept.  Those were my best sleeping hours.

But my husband was insistent from the beginning that we all had our own rooms and having the baby sleep with us was never an option.  It was tough for the first months, but we adjust.  And though it feels like forever, the baby does learn to sleep and sleep through the night.  We worry though about hearing the baby don’t we?  But for me my mother sensors were on high alert and I never failed to wake up when the baby called.

Switching the baby from crib to bed, well that’s quite a trick.  The blooming toddler discovers independence and now we have to worry where that kid will wander.  I had one that wandered every night into one of the other kids beds.  He was so little he was hard to find.  Finally I figured out that all he needed was a roommate.  We moved him over and the wandering stopped.

I’ve found it helpful to establish a bedtime ritual that is consistent and loving.  For us it started with songs and transitioned to book reading and then to a prayer by each bed.  I think as long as you spend some time in that day to night transition, snuggle a bit and end with a loving but firm good night, it eventually works quite well.  It even begins to become a big part of the day we all look forward to.

To win the bedtime war, we as parents just need to have a better plan than they do.  We need to set the rhythm.  If we give them too much lee-way, they’ll use it and drain us of the last bit of energy we have left for the day.

I needed to get my kids to bed.  I needed to have my own down time.  It was critical to my sanity.  If I let my kids take that away, I wouldn’t have much gumption to give them my best mommyness while they’re awake.

Once the habit was in place, we all fell in line with it.  And it even worked well when babysitters took over.

I have friends who lay down with their kids to help them go to sleep.  They usually fall asleep too.  I can’t imagine a worse precedent, but so many people do it, they must like it.  I remember one of my daughters had a little slumber party for her birthday when she was in first grade, one of the three girls she invited was crying for their mom by midnight and another one was going at 1AM.  Both moms had to pick up their kids.

But hard as I try, I just do not understand going to bed at 7:00 with your kids.  Oops or are these just the moms with one child?  That would make sense.  But I still wouldn’t do it.  I don’t know how long that part of the deal lasts and I don’t want to know either.  How many years of doing this do you do?

We are also a bit more lenient in the summer with actual bedtimes.  A lot of people believe parents need to be more stringent and consistent with this even in the summer, but for me it worked to relax the system a bit.  I found the best playtime of the day for my kids was actually after 7PM.  They played so wonderfully and creatively together, it just wasn’t in me to break it up.  They needed that time and magically it still gave me my time.

I have shopped late at night when my husband could be home with the sleeping kids and am constantly shocked to find so many parents out with very little kids in strollers and toddling next to them.  Most of the time the kids are as unhappy as they can possibly be, they are crying or whining, complaining in every way they know how.  And it’s like the parents don’t even notice.  What is wrong with them?  I understand people in difficult situations and that sometimes there’s just no other way, but then get done what needs to be done and go home!

When kids (and adults, I can relate) get overtired, they get stressed.  That releases the hormone, cortisol, which is like getting a second wind.  It makes it really hard to settle down and even after falling asleep, the tendency is to wake up more often through the night.  Who needs that?  Not me, not my child.  Of course this happens to all of us sometimes, it’s just all the time that is just not right to do to a child.

It’s funny as kids grow up, suddenly bedtime takes another turn, called homework…or better yet, projects!  None of my children picked up my penchant for procrastination, they are really very good about getting on tasks.  Sometimes though the task is a big one and it appeals to their artistic sense and it just takes them longer, so it spills into bedtime.  As they grow and do more, the bedtime expands and they start making some of their own decisions about when it’s time.  I think this is okay as long as we as parents stay in charge and don’t let the bedtime get out of hand.  It does though begin to teach them to manage it.

With two in high school and one in college, my husband and I find ourselves almost always heading to bed before the kids.  As uncomfortable as this is, I think it is the natural pattern of things.  I still have a hard time when the girls are out later babysitting and am conflicted about waiting up for them or snoozing.  But life is easier that way now with cell phones and our ability to communicate more closely.

The battle at bedtime, do we cause it ourselves maybe by not giving our kids enough attention while they’re awake.  Are they trying to make us notice them at bedtime, because now we finally are involving ourselves in their day?  Whew, that’s a thought that paints quite a picture.  We gotta have our love moments during the day or even as we say goodnight.  It’s too easy to get wrapped up in our own day, our own work that we ignore our kids.  How many times do we say goodbye before they walk out the door and there’s not even a glimpse of eye contact?  And it’s surprising how easily it happens.  Take those moments.  Create that connection at all their ages and stages and the payoff  will be spectacular.

But my best tip for bedtime (or anytime) … speak the positive about what we want them to do.  Instead of saying, “you better not stall around like you did last night,” it would be better to say, “let’s snuggle up and I’ll read you one good book before lights out.”  That also sets up the routine and the expectation.  But I love the idea of the positive aspect.  Just tell them what we want them to do, not what we don’t.

Amen to that.  Good night!

Think about this:

Any kid will run any errand for you, if you ask at bedtime. Red Skelton 

It is one of life’s bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.  ~Lemony Snicket

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?”  Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.”  ~Charles M. Schulz

Night time is really the best time to work.  All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep.  ~Catherine O’Hara

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.  ~Vincent Van Gogh

Helpful Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9nVU-tLfjs

http://children.webmd.com/guide/guidelines-for-your-childs-bedtime

http://children.webmd.com/features/make-your-kids-bedtime-battle-free

http://singleparents.about.com/od/parenting/qt/bedtimeroutine.htm

http://terrificparenting.com/bedtime-battles

http://moms.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/03/17/4031348-curing-your-kids-bedtime-blues-so-you-can-both-get-back-to-sleep

Now from my perspective, I’ve always loved TV.  I’ve loved the story form of it.  Being a die-hard creative type, I’ve always been drawn to what’s being created for it.

When I was young, our family had one TV, then two, then one in color, then eventually got to three, then went back to two, but both in color.  In the day, parents were concerned with how much TV we watched.  What did they give us?  An hour a day?  Maybe two hours in the summer?  They didn’t usually use TV as a babysitter, they babysat the TV.

No they didn’t need babysitters for us.  They just set the boundaries outdoors and let us run for it!  No cell phones, no connection, no contact for hours & hours, they didn’t know where we were.  Well they had a clue.  They had home phones with miles of twisted cord so they could vacuum while they talked and while they had their mom time on the phone, they updated each other on who saw the kids last and where they thought we were off to.

So I didn’t grow up with a lot of TV in my background, but when I got to college and jumped off the what’s my major going to be wheel, I landed in TV, and shock of all shocks, I was good at it.  And so fortunately and luckily after college I got a job in TV.  Those were the days before cable, when the networks were king of kings and there were only a couple stations in every market.

Those were the days of Happy Days and Soap and Barney Miller and the Love Boat.  All pretty milk toast and mild compared to today’s fare.  I promoted shows like those along with News and other local shows we ran.  My claim to fame was beating Oprah in our market one November during the onslaught of her popularity, where she was on the cover of every magazine on the newsstands.  The show we beat her with was Small Wonder, a meekly mild kid’s show.  No one could believe it.  It was a miracle not to be repeated, but one good win with a small show that probably didn’t make it a year on the air was fun, fun, fun.

I digress, but the point is I grew to know and understand and love TV for the creative and entertaining deal that it was.

Fast forward now 20 years or so, where I’m long out of the business.  I have 5 kids, 2 dogs (1 of which watches TV), a husband who still works in the business.  And so we now have 8 TV’s and full access for all anytime, any day.  With 8 TV’s there’s one for each of us with 1 to spare!  Four of those TV’s have their own DVR.  This is affectionately called “the box” by the kids and they love it for being able to record all the shows they are missing.  The older ones catch up with their shows somewhere in the middle of the night.  And somewhere along the way, I lost total connection to what they’re watching.  Now they talk about what they’re watching and what they like, but I’m not the boss anymore.

Back when they were pre-schoolers, they would watch a good show like Barney.  Or the Wiggles.  It felt to me like I watched every show they were watching, until one day when I heard their little voices talking about “Sponge Bob Square Pants” and that sounded so hilariously funny to me and who was “Bob the Builder”.  They were finding other shows.  And pretty soon it’s “Hannah Montana” or “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.”

Then we’re finding they know a star or two each time on “Dancing With The Stars” from the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon or…Jersey Shore?  We think we’re keeping track, but they move on so much faster than we do

My husband loves Desperate Housewives.  I don’t know if it’s his way of trying to figure us out or what really, but for years we’ve been loyal viewers.  Now in it’s last year on TV, my three girls and even my youngest boy are waiting around waiting for us to turn it on.  I didn’t realize how many cringeable moments are on that show until I started thinking about what the kids might be wondering.

Another show they like to watch with me is The Bachelor/Bachelorette.  They like choosing out the best guy or girls.  We like picking out how fake they are, and how catty the girls are to each other.  I think there’s a good teaching experience with that show and I try and pick them out and talk about them with the girls.  But especially I like when they pick out things and give their opinion about them.  I hope these shows work to guide the kids in a better direction rather than teaching them the wrong direction that I think those shows tend to go in.

The TV trend seems to be going from bad to worse to what’s the worst that could possibly happen?  Producers of these shows are really out to horrify us.  And there’s plenty of people to draw from out there in the world who are happy to do that.

Here’s a few of the amazingly disturbing/captivating/must watch TV on TV.  Have you seen some of these?  What can you add to the list?

Toddlers & Tiaras

Gossip Girl

The Girls of the Playboy Mansion

Jersey Shore

Teens Having Babies

The Kardashians

Disaster Date

Say Yes to the Dress

4 Weddings

South Park

The Simpsons

Fear Factor

I can’t even begin to name them all, because I don’t know them all.  I haven’t ever watched a whole show of any of these, just bits and pieces of the ones the kids are entranced by.

I don’t know what their story will be when they look back on it all, but I’m hoping they’re smart enough to separate the riff from the raff.  We think they are or their father & I would exercise our privilege as parents to take it away.  At some point though, they begin to live with their own decisions.

The movement in TV to the extreme does bother me.  In the case of American Idol where they went from an inexpensive, simple stage in year one to an all decked out, wildly produced amazing look today seems like a normal transition with the success of the show.

But in other shows like the Bachelor, where they went from simple dates to extreme locations and experiences where they wear the least amount of clothes most of the time and do whatever it takes to reel in a guy they don’t even care about has traveled in the wrong extreme.  And it takes away from the simple relationship point in the show.  Now if there’s not an extreme shocking episode every few along the way, it’s not good enough.  Now they have to purposely bring in people to thwart the goings on!  I don’t know, maybe after years and years, the show doesn’t hold up and we need these extremes to stay hooked.

What a lot of pressure to come up with these shows and what a lot of pressure to increase the beauty and tension of them each year.  The formula is the formula that needs to be further ravaged each year.  It’s wearing on me.  And I just find more reluctance to watch.  But habits through the years die hard.  And with 8 TV’s, one is always buzzing.

I don’t see it getting any better, though I hope it does.  How much worse can it get?

My husband turns to sports, I turn to pinterest!

Helpful Links:

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/articles/violence/toxic_tv.cfm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1183891/Hooked-toxic-TV-Teen-viewing-diaries-reveal-alarming-diet-sex-greed-cruelty.html

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/best-tv-shows-of-2010-11-season

http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/40-tv-shows/

Or more exactly she was never quite alive.  I have never been able to wrap my head around the couponing craze.

I’m the worst failure at saving money through clipping and cataloguing, nickel and diming.  The heart in my soul just can’t get into it.  Have I tried?  Yes I’ve tried several things in several ways and not done well.  So not being a good quitter, I set it aside.  Again and again I set it aside.  It’s still sitting to the side.  It’s time to bury it!

I am not a coupon queen, no way, no how, even in my bestest days, I am not.  Maybe it’s the math.  Maybe it’s the organization.  Maybe that it’s just not fun for me.  All of these could be major reasons.  It’s not in my DNA.  Even if I had no money at all, I could still not figure out how to do it.  Not to save my life…or yours!  Perish the thought.

I think it would be a nice talent to have.  I’m just smart enough to know, it’s not a talent that was gifted to me.  I do use some coupons though and I’ve gotten really good at those!  My breakthrough coupon is Bed Bath & Beyond.  The reason that works for me is threefold.  It’s big and hearty and looks the same.  I can find it, put my hand on it, collect it.  It’s easy.  Then I learned, even though it has an expiration date on it, I can always use it, it really never expires and even though it’s only 20% off one item, you can use as many as you want at a time at the counter.  And then to top it all off, I came up with a brilliant filing system to always have as many of these coupons on hand when I need them.  As soon as I get them, I insert them in the side pocket of my car.  That way when I’m driving past and thinking I need a new humidifier, I can zoom right in and pick it up.  No going home, or getting distracted, or forgetting.  It works for me.

HOWEVER, why do I have to use a coupon?  Why do they make me carry it around.  Why do they work so hard to bend my mind to think like that?  Why don’t they just give me 20% off everything just because I walked in the store?  I might buy even more with an incentive like that.  And from a company who understands I’m not liking this coupon queen task!  Maybe I would buy everything I buy there, maybe I would talk about it to all my “similar thinking” friends.  Maybe they could make a mint just by understanding me!  I’m loving that idea.

I have a punch card for Mr. Goodcents and I’m actually pretty faithful in using it.  I go and order 7 sub sandwiches for the family and get 7 stamps.  It doesn’t take so long before one day one is free.  I feel on top of the world.  I saved a couple dollars.

I also have one of those punchcards for Einsteins Bagels, Culvers, Dunkin Donuts, The Good Egg, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Port of Subs, Wetzels Pretzels, Zoyo Yogurt and are you getting the picture?  When I go to these places, by the time all 7 of us order, I’ve forgotten I even have a card.  (And of course they never ask you if you do, that might jog my memory).  And so then we eat and leave and ka-pow, then I remember.  And you know what?  Then I get mad.  Not at me.  At them.  C’mon a little help!

And then there are the credit card like cards that you gotta tell ‘em you have or run through their machine.  I like my Barnes & Noble card that automatically takes off 10% or is it 20%…oh well, it’s never enough!  But I can find it and use it and they always ask me if I have it, because if I don’t they will be able to sell me one.  Oh yes I get to pay to get my discount!  If they knew I had the card, they wouldn’t ask.  Maybe I should wear a shirt that says, “Don’t ask me for my card, I’ll forget.”

But the other stores like Best Buy and Office Max and Petco and American Eagle, they check me for my card every time.  But I never know what I get for using it.  Supposedly you’re supposed to build up points and then get a coupon?  But I don’t know really and the reason I don’t know is because apparently I have to register this card.  I have to go online and give them a lot of information about myself and in turn when I spend enough money I will get something back.  The trouble is nobody knows how much you have to spend to get (what) back.  It’s too many hoops to jump through.  And you know what, they’re getting more out of it financially than I am.  They now have a bunch of info about me that they can sell.  And they’ve had my hits to their website to increase the value of their website.  Brilliant.

I was checking out a few things at Hobby Lobby one day and was asked if I had any coupons.  Now I’m already feeling terrible, because here I’m about to pay for something that I could get for a lot less, or some less.  So I’m shaking my head no and kicking myself and she tells me “just go to our website on your phone, there’s a coupon there, just show it to me on your phone and you can get 20% off.  I loved that idea!  They just want the hits to their website and it’s easy.  Everybody should do that.  But you do have to have a smart phone.  Pretty soon everyone will.

I was getting bagels the other day and as I was paying for my dozen, a lady interrupted to ask if her coupon would work in that store.  Yes it works, the guy said.  Bummer and I paid full price!  Again I feel bad.  But I gotta remember I did no work to pay full price.  It would have taken me – how much time – to find, organize, choose out and actually bring a coupon, and what value of time did I lose to save how much?  Say it’s a half hour of my time and I saved a dollar, is it worth it?

My daughter was selling those big entertainment coupon books for $25 for her dance class to make some money.  She had to sell 6 of them.  So I bought them all!  I kept one and turned the others into gifts.  Every once in a while I look through that book.  It takes so long that suddenly I look up and whew, it’s too late to cook dinner and I go back to the coupon book.  One time I chose a pizza place with a nice discount.  I went in ordered my pizzas to go and found out…oh no, that coupon only applies to the owner operated stores, not the franchises.  The nearest store that would accept the coupon was 20 minutes away.  I paid the couple extra dollars!

The funny thing about that coupon book is I not only forget I have it, I never have it where I need it!  I should keep it in the car, but then I want to look through it, so I bring it in the house, then the next time I’m in the car, it’s not there.

My sister torments me.  We are out at dinner or something together and she hands me a coupon for the restaurant.  “You have this one too,” she says, “in the coupon book, but since you never use that thing…here’s mine!”  I’m always thankful she has it in hand!  But guilty AGAIN!

Have you ever tried the airline reward plans where you fly so many miles and then after so many get a free flight?  I’ve been a disaster at that too.  Since they rig it for businesses and not families, this is a hard one for me to win at.  I say businesses because people who travel a lot for their business can rack up a lot of miles quickly and then can use them for personal use.  Any companies I ever worked for though never let me use that mileage, so maybe it doesn’t work for business travelers either.  For me with a large family, it’s a frightening disaster.  First you have to have an account for each person and our miles can’t build together or be transferred to each other.  So we take a little trip.  It costs us $3000.  If we do that 10 more times, we might each get a free trip.  Oh but wait, there’s a time limit on that!  If you don’t use your miles in a reasonable time, boom gone!

And what about the second flight?  What if the first airline is double the price, or double the inconvenience to fly?  Yeah, we’re going to pick another airline.  Sign us up again!  We’ll never win that prize.  Improbable.  Impractical.  Imbecilic.

I was driving through a burger place the other night getting dinner for the family.  (And yes I do cook, but they get sick of it)  I was happily clutching 6 coupons that would ultimately save me $6.  But the cashier got so confused, even with my simple order that she forgot to deduct my coupon amount.  “That’s okay, I’ll use them another time,” I say.  When it’s too much waiting, it’s too much waiting, don’t you think?

So this blog is dedicated to all the retailers out there who profit from my abysmal ability to use their coupons and profit from others who are dedicated coupon queens.  Either way, I think they’re getting what they want from it.  Everything evens out.

I will say, I think I shop less and buy less because I always feel like I’m coupon cheated.  Just give me your best product at your best price and help me feel good about it.

Hallelujah and amen.  If you want real good coupon tips, you’ll have to listen to the other moms on the radio show.  I think I was the only loser!

Happy coupon collecting!  When you make a million, let me know so I can feel bad!  I won’t disappoint!

Let’s start with some helpful sites that Ali uses:

www.addictedtosaving.com

www.thekrazycouponlady.com

How to get started: http://thekrazycouponlady.com/beginners/

Other sites: www.groupon.com

www.livingsocial.com

Helpful Links:

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/bargainshopping/a/Coupon_Guide.htm

http://www.couponwinner.com/get-the-most-out-of-coupons.aspx

http://dealista.quickanddirtytips.com/double-coupons.aspx

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29468915/ns/today-money/t/how-get-worth-groceries-cents/#.T33VABzgpxw

http://www.couponmom.com/faq-21

No that’s not at all the thought in our head.  We just have one that we love so much, we think we should try another.  I know some people who really think about whether they should have another child or not, but for me & my husband we just go with the flow.

Right from the outset, we wanted a big family.  We laid in a hammock on a beautiful fall day and named our six kids…to be.  Not once during that conversation did we think or say, “I wonder how they will all get along?”  If someone would have asked me, I’d have given them my blank stare, of course how could it be anything from perfect.

Fast forward a couple decades to now…where we have 4 teenagers and a pre-teen living in the house.  How could I have not forseen this?  Actually there’s no way we can forsee anything that relates to the pairing and matching of our seven different personalities.

And it’s an amazing and wonderful thing to watch.  I love the siblinghood and the part my husband and I have played in it all.  Watching their personalities develop and then intermix with each other’s personalities is like watching a puzzle come together, fitting the pieces, but oh not quite, let’s try it here or better yet on this side of the puzzle.  And watching them adjust to accommodate one another, even though that doesn’t always happen well, is really just a thing of beauty.

You notice things early, like an older sibling giving the baby in the car seat a smack.  Then as toddlers, the only toy they want is the one the other one is holding.  They whack and smack and kick and bite, laugh and cry and chase and holler.  And through it all we try to intercede, to make it even, to haha…teach!  And maybe something we do or say along the way hits home, but I could never put a finger on what worked actually.  (But if I had to make a guess, maybe it wasn’t so much what we said, but the love for them and for each other we modeled in our home.)

As we added more kids to the mix, there was a tilt in the relationships, different pairings and matchups taking place.  In his book “The Sibling Effect,” Jeffrey Kluger had a pretty good observation.  It goes something like this.  You have the first two siblings who fight with each other, but when sibling #3 comes along, sibling #1 pulls out, so the fight becomes between #2 & #3, then when # 4 comes along #2 pulls out and #3 & #4 go at it.  Then when #5 comes along #3 pulls out and #4 & #5 give & take the heat!  I stop there because we have 5 and I can say, that’s pretty much how that played out for us.  Not that the others don’t have their fights and arguments, but the primary contenders are the last two.  They are the ones that make the rest of us pull our hair out.

The thing I always loved about watching the siblings interact was when things changed.  Change always brought out new and strengthened relationships.  When our oldest started school and was gone a large portion of the day, #2 who loved and adored #1 turned to #3 in play and a different friendship formed, it was not the same as #1 & #2 shared, it was a new relationship.  When #1 came home later in the day, #2 slid back over to favored #1, but #3 was more in the mix and how special it was to watch the different kind of play and conversation when it was just #2 & #3 and watch that grow and develop for a couple years…until, #2 went to school and #3 turned to #4 in play and a whole new relationship developed.  Meanwhile #1 & #2 now have a new bond from their shared experience in school.

And that cycle continues as they share different experiences together.  School is the most obvious one.  The ones who share middle school at the same time, the ones who are in high school together, now have new reconnections and more mature bonds.  Now as they graduate and go off to college those special one on one friendships are changing once again in a new more adult like way.

While all the kids connect with each other in their own unique way and the obvious friendships between the ones connected by age, there are also the bonds between the boys and between the girls.  The boys bond mostly through sports, the ones they like to play, soccer and the ones they like to watch, everything else.  Although they are 8 years apart, the older one has mentored the younger one and the younger one with 4 older siblings is way smart beyond his years, so the age difference works well and wonderfully.  The boys are best friends and respect each other’s boundaries.

The girls are cuter than cute together.  They’ve spent many years doing dance and cheer performances and competitions together.  Because the 3 of them are so close in age, they could march together into any circumstance and have strength in numbers.  This has given them their own confidence as they move on often without each other.  But at the end of the day seeing them reconnect and share their experiences is great fun.

They are older now, they run in their own directions, have their separate schools and commitments and interests.  Sometimes there are days, even a week where they don’t see some of their siblings at all.  But after time away like that what great joy it is to watch them gather once again, laugh, tell the stories of their day and their time between meetings.  It’s an absolute treasure.  It’s the light at the end of the tunnel after refereeing all those fights along the way.  It’s exactly what I hoped and wished for, healthy, happy relationships between our children.

A friend of ours had a unique opportunity with his siblings that either his parents or grandparents had set up through their will.  What they did was put money into an account that was to be used every year to bring the family together in one place during the summer.  The money provided for their family’s travel, accommodations and everything else during their time together.  Each year a different sibling would plan the vacation and location.  So they would get to see different places each year and spend solid time with their siblings and their families.  And basically it was all expense paid.  I just thought (and still think) what a wonderful gift and wonderful way to hold the family together, especially a family like theirs that lived all over the country.  Really I think it’s one of the best ideas for a will that I’ve ever heard.

Because isn’t that what we all want in the end for our children?  We don’t only want them to get along.  We want them to want to be together, to continue to share their lives even though they move away and build very separate lives.  We want to know we did a good job helping those sibling friendships to build, thrive and survive.

Because it does make a certain amount of sense, that we spend the majority of years of our life with sibling relationships, longer than with our parents or with our spouses.  So as a parent, when I leave this world, I want my kids to have each other and be best friends with each other.  I can’t force this, but I will endorse it!

In every subtle little way I can.

Helpful Links:

http://allday.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/26/10509831-todays-life-illustrated-siblings-that-stick-together

http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/parenting/sibling_rivalry.shtml

http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/sibling_rivalry.html#

http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/sibriv.htm