Pity Party

I am having a pity party. Everyone is invited! You just have to fulfill a couple of requirements. The first of course is that you have to be feeling extremely sorry for yourself. I mean not just a little sad, really sorry for yourself. You have to be thinking you are the worst mother in the world, and everyone in the world knows it. You also have to be thinking that you have screwed up your kids for ever and ever and they will never have a normal happy life, ever, ever.

Doubting every decision you have ever made in relation to your children would also be a good thing. Remembering every mistake you made, every time you ever yelled, every time you did not yell, every time you looked at them wrong! These all add to the party quite well. Heck throw in the fact that you had a lousy birth with them and dropped them a few times helps also.

Of course you have to look at your life and think of everything you would of should of could of done differently is ideal for a pity party. There are so many things you did bassackwards and that for sure added to the fact that you have screwed up their lives so well.

I love that line in "Fun With Dick and Jane" by the way when they are looking at having to lose their house and she says," then we would have to move and he would lose all of his friends and he would grow up a social misfit with no friends and nothing to show for his whole life". When we watch that movie all my kids laugh and say that is so mom!

The things that would spoil my pity party? Well of course looking at all these really cool people that we have raised the best we could and seeing that, man are they cool people. Like even if they were not my kids I would love hanging out with them. I mean I would even call them on the phone and ask them to go to lunch or something, and I don't do that very often.

In reflecting on my pitiful mood today I realized that in reality I was just feeling "guilty". Man I hate that word! It is a loaded word and I have to write things like the above to realize that I really have no reason to feel guilty. Part of the price of being a Mormon is the guilt train that we all tend to ride, quite often actually.

Can you just imagine we are supposed to multiply and replenish the earth, keep the word of wisdom, be temple worthy and prepare the kids for this, teach our daughters to be wonderful homemakers like us, get our sons to serve two year missions, never have your kids get arrested or in trouble etc. etc. etc.....

As you can see lots of room for guilt on that plate. I have gotten into the habit of taking the whole church tradition out of my feelings about people in general. In other words I ask myself," if I was not measuring this person against the church how would I feel about them?" I think it is sad that I have to do this to set aside my judging, but I do. I was raised that way, it is in my DNA.

The really bad part is I don't just judge others harshly, I also judge myself this way. That, my friends would explain why I have to have pity parties. So the party is over, done with and I am on my way to make something to eat. I made a cake earlier that I dropped getting out and broke my favorite brownie pan and just turned and walked out of the kitchen. Just added to the party really well as refreshments!

Have a great Mothers Day and try to focus on the positives, just like I did :)

IT Geek to the Rescue

There are times when being married to an IT geek comes in very handy. Like when you need a web site programmed. This IT guy is great! He figured out how to do all the edits we needed on our web site, and sure surprised himself.

Not only that, but he found time to paint the kitchen, hallway and touch up the front room. What a catch ha?

Oh yeah almost forgot. He also grilled hamburgers for the missionaries for dinner. What a man :)

SPANISH SPEAKING

Whenever people ask me how long I have lived in Costa Rica I usually mumble "two and a half years". The reason being usually when people ask it is in reference to my Spanish speaking, or I should say my lack thereof!
When we first arrived here I had the best intentions to learn Spanish. I had my verb trees and worked very hard to memorize them. I went to classes every Saturday that the missionaries held at the church.
The reason they started holding the classes was because they were tired of translating everything at church for us. So they told us they would use the books they learned with and we would have it down in no time.
Well big surprise boys! I was sent here with no "gift of tongues". We are just on our own to try and master the Spanish language. My husband cheated when he got called to be in the branch presidency and had a blessing by the stake pres. that he would be able to learn Spanish. He definately has it a lot more than I do.
What I am getting to is the fact that tomorrow our family is speaking in church. It is the third time and you would think they would have learned the first two times! It is just painful to listen to us. Me the worst because I have a theory that the bluer the eyes the stronger the accent.
My daughter sounds great, and her boyfriend helped her with hers. My husband sounds great, because of course he was "blessed". Then there is me!
I guess they have to have us get up once in awhile for some comic relief. Don't know if that is sacrelig or not, but at least they look up at me very politely and don't outright laugh. They are very kind here.