heyMamas

The tax bracket effect

"Mama are we rich?" 

This from Lily, my kindergartner.......

 

"Where did you hear a word like that, rich?  What does rich even mean, do you know?"

"Just answer the question Mama, are we rich?"

"I am not going to answer that question.  Why are you asking me that?  Where did you hear that word?"

"Just tell  me, I said, are we rich?"

"I know that you heard that from somebody in school and if you want me to answer, you will tell me who asked you a question like that."

"UGH, MAMMMMMAAA, just answer the question.  Are we rich?"

"The only thing I will say is that we have everything we need in order for us to be happy."

"Does that mean we are rich?"

"For the last time Lily, what friend did you hear that from?  Little children should not be talking about being rich, you don't even know what that means."

"Cassie told me her family was rich and asked me if mine was also."

"We have everything we need and Mommy and Daddy do just fine."

"Oh ok, so we are half rich?"
 

Jesus will still love you

The girls told me the other day that if you do this with your finger, but not put it up all the way...that Jesus will still love you.  I thought given that it was Ash Wednesday and all, it was fitting.

Not the same as it was

There is something about these past few weeks, even months, that is just so radically different from what I am accustomed to at work.  I know work is work and it is not supposed to really be fun per say, but work for me used to be fun.  It was always busy and fast-paced, but I was surrounded by people that I enjoyed being around.  People that made me laugh and always made "work" seem a little less like work.  

I have been lucky I guess, so I will take my lumps as they come now.  I only had one job that was so unbearable it was in retrospect, amusing.  I can say that now as I have over ten years of distance from it.  It was in a company that was like an MTV but on college campuses.  

I worked as the Executive Assistant to the President who was a transplanted Southern man as the corporate headquarters was based down south.  He and his wife (no kids) relocated to New York City so he could run the company and in between his rollerblading lessons in Central Park (dork) he tried to do just that.   

This fine gentleman would use this southern accent of his and would be all, "c'mon daaarrlling, you can do it.  What is the right answer?  Come on baby girl, what is it?"  I mean this New York City CEO would talk to his employees as if he were out on the golf course or flipping burgers over the BBQ in his backyard.  

Whenever I didn't know the answer to something he would start in, "c’mon baby girl, you can do it, c'mon darrrlling I know you can do it.  What is the right answer?"  I always wanted to reply, "I don't know the answer you fool, but here is a question for you sir, who the fuck talks like that in midtown Manhattan?"

This gem would pull up a chair and take residence in my cube on a daily basis.  As a New Yorker, a lack of personal space is not entirely unusual to me.   It is just part of the allure (kidding) of the City and most New Yorkers are quite adept at dealing with it. 

What I was not adept at dealing with was this so-called CEO pulling a chair into my already crowded cubical on a daily basis to go over my work with me.  We would update Excel spreadsheets with information and he felt it necessary to sit right next to me while we did this. 

This freaky whack-a-do would make me cry all the time even though I tried like hell not too.  But I was just a kid in one of my first jobs in the big city and this guy was just off his rocker.  I have been very lucky since leaving that place to have met and worked with genuinely great people.  Executives at much higher levels than him in companies far greater than his, have always been respectful and full of good old fashioned New York manners, and no that is not an oxymoron, people in New York do have manners.   

The world is changing and people are so scared of losing their jobs and their livelihoods that they don’t really have fun at work anymore.  I don’t blame them at all in fact I am one of them, I am just melancholy for the old days when I could do my job but also laugh all day.   

I will close with a shout out to all my old work peeps, all you ladies out there, you know who you are and you know how much I miss working with you, you DAARRLINGS......!

Second but certainly not last

I can only imagine how it must feel to be the second child.  I suppose it is better than being the third child which is what I was, although being the baby certainly had its benefits.  Like your parents don't watch over you nearly as much as they did your older sisters because they are just so damn tired.  Or you get your first pair of Levi's five years before they did and even then, they were still wearing Wranglers or Dungarees.  Despite the perk of getting things earlier and having tired parents, sometimes it might be fun to be the oldest. 

Lily always gets Belle's cast off's, whether it be outgrown clothes, shoes, toys, or cleats.  Whatever it may be, if Belle has outgrown it chances are she will get a brand spanking new one and Lily naturally will get the cast off. 

Since I only have two children, I do try to limit the hand-me-downs.  There are many things that I will buy for Lily even though I already have a few of them at home.  Every child is entitled to have some nice, new shiny things and birth order shouldn't dictate that.

On the flip side of all the hand-me-downs, lies the upside of being the second born.  The second child gets to learn from all of the mistakes that the first child makes.  The second gets to learn the alphabet two years before the first.  Or maybe its learning the multiplication tables at five, or riding their bike two years earlier than their older sibling did.   

Do you see where I am going with this?  Lily has been listening in and benefitting from her sisters learning and taking notes for almost six years now.  There have been countless times when I have been working with Belle and Lily will shout out the answers from another room.  Lily is slick and she is ALWAYS listening even when you think she is just sitting quietly playing her Nintendo. 

Like the time Lily basically toilet trained herself because we were at the Hersey Hotel in Pennsylvania and the girls wanted to go swimming with their cousin.  I had run out of swim diapers and told Lily that if she wanted to go swimming she would have to go to the bathroom on the potty.  So we tried it and she did it that day and every day thereafter. 

I think that was the first time that Drew and I saw Lily's sheer determination.  Lily sets her mind to things and she does it.  She never looks back and she doesn't question herself.  She just moves forward and does exactly what she intended.   

Lily does things like this alot.  She played soccer this past season for the first time ever and scored three goals in her first game.  All the while, just standing there looking all adorable on the field and not thinking anything of it. 

So blah blah blah you might say, and to that I say this "ok, I will get to the point of my post now."  One day a few weeks ago Lily picked up a book and started sounding out the words.  She started sounding out the words and that turned into reading the words.  It started in small ways here and there and then like TWO days later, she picks up this book that she had just bought at a school book fair and full on starts to read it. 

Lily just has that thing, that thing that sets her apart from anyone else, be it big or small.  She just gets it in a way that even I aspire to. 

Love letters

My girls constantly send me love letters.  I thank them immediately, give them a huge hug and let them know how special these notes make me feel.  I mean I have at least fifty and they are all over my house, in boxes that contain personal mementos, in my files, in the drawers next to my bed.  You name the place and chances are, it is stuffed with either a note or a picture. 

With all of life's craziness that we get swept up in, although the note is always addressed, sometimes I forget about it and move on to the next thing that we have to get done.  When I have a quiet moment to reflect on these notes, I am so absolutely enthralled by the fact that MY little girls, the little girls that I still can't believe are mine, the little girls that I baked in my belly are writing notes to me and their Dad about how much they love us.

The picture part that accompanies the love letter is usually our family together holding hands, like the picture below.  Pictures of us out doing things, seeing places, whatever the particular situation, but it is always our family together with love written somewhere in the note. 

During my pregnancy, I could only dream about receiving notes like these.  I would always wonder how long it would take for my little angels to be able to articulate their feelings to me, much less write them down in a note, throw it in an envelope (which is always how they arrive), and leave it for me to find. 

Before long they will be writing notes to their friends or worse, their boyfriends and I will have to BEG them to draw a picture of the four of us walking together, holding hands.  And I am almost positive that the response to my begging for a love note, will be something along the lines of "please Mom, that is like so pathetic."

So I will hoard these notes and cherish every single one of them because I know as each day passes the chances of getting another one dies a little death.