I’d like to think I have it all together.  Or at least I like for it  to appear that way.  So when someone asks, “Is there something I can do to help you out?”  and I breezily reply, “Oh, no, I’ve got it, thanks,” I am hopeful it may actually seem as though I really do have it all together!

Nothing can be farther from the truth.  I can always use some help.  Pride and stubbornness prevent me from admitting that freely, I guess, and just asking.

Last week, as I prepared for the upcoming foot surgery, I knew I would be okay.  The Husband would take excellent care of me.  He would also take good care of the children.  But I wondered:  who will take care of The Husband?  I mean, I know there are times when one of us carries a greater share than the other and that’s just the way it is…but I determined I would do what I could to help him out.

And so I turned to my network of girlfriends.  I humbly asked if they would each be willing to feed my family one meal during my recovery period.  To my surprise, each friend enthusiastically agreed, and we set up a schedule of meal deliveries.

It wasn’t easy to for me ask, and I tried not to feel bad doing so.  These women are my friends and of course I would help them if they asked me, right?  In an instant, with a glad heart!  I recognized they very much wanted to help me and my family, and I am grateful I asked.

The meals have truly benefited the entire family–The Husband most especially.  I know he appreciates not having to figure out what to make for dinner after a day of corralling the kids and waiting on me hand-and-foot.  And an added bonus:  visiting with these friends for a short while when they drop off their meals has been a great way for us to have a little bit of unexpected catch-up time.

I know the next time I need help with something, I’ll probably still balk  and hesitate to ask, but maybe I won’t be quite as stubborn and prideful.  I hope I remember what a blessing it was go-round with having a little extra help.

But first and foremost right now, I am recovering from foot surgery.

Remember how I was rocking the immobilization boot when I went out to the Yahoo! Motherboard Summit?  Yesterday, a ganglion cyst was removed from my right foot.  It’s all happened kind of quickly and it feels a bit surreal.  My foot is now a big fluffy ball of gauze and ace bandages.  When I move about, I have to put on that darn immobilization boot and clumsily maneuver on crutches.

One thing I about the surgery yesterday:  As I was being wheeled to the OR, I said to the nurse, “Oh, I’ve never actually seen the inside of an OR before!”  The very last memory I have is me craning my neck to see through the OR doors.  That’s it.  I cannot remember anything after that, about the room at all.  (I suppose that’s better than Lisa of Workout Mommy’s experience…she told me during her foot surgery, she woke up and said, “I CAN HEAR YOU!”  Wow.)

I have no recollection of anything after the OR doors…until what felt like two seconds later, I woke in the recovery room because I was cold.  I even mumbled to the  nurse, “Is the surgery finished?  Has it just been a minute or so?”  It was very TV like…as if the scene cut from the OR doors to the recovery room!

So now I am home.  The Husband is being very strict in taking care of me, and yet waiting on me hand and foot (ha).  He is a rock star.  I sleep.  I drink.  I eat.  My foot stays elevated.  Painkiller are taken every four hours on the dot.  I attempt to read books.

Most importantly, I make myself stay away from the computer when I am in the midst of my painkiller high.  Speaking of which, it’s time for another Vicodin.

Since having children, however, we are finding an increasing number of small issues on which we disagree. We’re committed to presenting a united front to our children, even if we haven’t yet found a true compromise. This leaves us wondering how to keep our marriage peaceful as we work through these parenting disagreements.

This week’s battle: the definition (and frequency) of A Special Treat.

Read the rest at MyBlogalicious!

Now, you should know by now that I am not on the same side of the country as California.  And also, you should know that I never get to go anywhere without my family in tow…so this trip was a dream vacation for me!

About 80 bloggers were there–mommy bloggers, food bloggers, travel bloggers, bloggers of all types!  Those of us coming from out of the area descended upon SFO and SJC, and were taken to the Four Seasons Palo Alto where we got pampered.  The next day, we were bused to Yahoo!’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, where the purple carpet was rolled out for us.  See?

The summit itself was packed with sessions from Flickr, Yahoo! Shine, Yahoo! Green, Yahoo! for Good, Yahoo! Social Products, and an online safety roundtable.  It was all good information, and helpful to us as bloggers and moms.  It was cool to be able to listen to the sessions, as well as feel listened to by the people at Yahoo!

Yahoo! did it right:  they treated us well, they took care of us and gave us pertinent, useful information.  I had a wonderful time connecting with awesome bloggers despite my gimpy status.

And just because I can, here are some additional photos.

Hey look!  It’s me!

Note:  As a Yahoo! MotherBoard member, Yahoo covered all of my expenses to come to their Summit.  I am not required to blog or write about any of the events associated with the conference…but when I do, all opinions are my own!

1. It’s the beach, after all! The sun, the surf, the sand, the salty ocean air…ahhhh!
2. Tired kids. Very very tired kids.  Being in the sun, building castles in the sand, running in in the surf, and playing hard all day long makes for exhausted children.  As a matter of fact, BabyMuffin asked to go to sleep soon after dinner tonight!
3. Boardwalk food. Thrasher’s fries, Kohr Bros frozen custard, Nicola Pizza…to name just a few of my personal favorites.
4. Work at home…is left at home. Enough said about that.
5. Tax-free shopping! Since we vacation in The First State, we take advantage of no sales tax and outlet malls in the area!

On that note, however, I’ve started moving my DC Metro Moms posts over here.  You’ve probably already seen a few, and I apologize for all the spammy DCMM posts.

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You know what is said about one door closing and another door opening, right?  I’ve begun contributing to MyBlogalicious as an Editorialista in their parenting section.  I am excited for the chance to be a part of this community and will be posting once per week (if all goes well!).  Come check it out!

Yeah.  That’s what I thought.  I know you all are jealous, my dear #YMotherboard friends.

Happy Star Wars Day!

You know. Today is May 4.  May the fourth.  May the force be with you!

Okay, corny, I know.  Normally I am not a fan of puns…but I am a Star Wars fan.  Chalk it up to being a child of the 70s…and because Mark Hamill was once a student at the local intermediate and high schools I was to attend.  I remember when The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980.  My folks dropped my cousins, sister, and me off at the local mall two hours before it opened.  We sat outside the movie theatre in a long line, waiting to buy tickets.  Suffice to say that the all the episodes in the movie series had me giddy with excitement at each release.

George Lucas original draft read, ““A long, long time ago, in the not-too-distant future…”

Then I married The Husband, who is a huge sci-fi geek.  His knowledge of Star Wars trivia astounds me, and we now own all of the movies.  It’s not uncommon for me to find The Husband working in front of the television with one of the Star Wars movies on for background noise.  More often than not, I’ll sit down to watch with him.

The same linguist who invented the Klingon language for “Star Trek” invented the languages spoken in the Cantina scene in Episode 4.

We always have a good time quoting well-known lines when the situation merits…and even when it doesn’t call for it!  A well-placed Yoda, “Hmmmm?” speaks volumes in this house!

Leia:  “Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf-herder!”
Han Solo:  “Who’s scruffy-looking?”

Yoda:  “Do or do not.  There is no ‘try.’”

Elan:  “Do you wanna buy some death sticks?”
Obi-Wan:  “You don’t want to sell me death sticks.”
Elan:  “I don’t want to sell you death sticks.”
Obi-Wan:  “You want to go home and rethink your life.”
Obi-Wan:  “I want to go home and rethink my life.”

And of course…
Darth Vader:  “Luke…I am your father.”

Our kids haven’t yet been introduced to the wonder of The Force, but it will happen soon.  I wonder if they will be as enamored with the story of good versus evil as much as we are?  They have to be…they are our children after all!  And furthermore, one of our kids shares a name as one of the major characters from the film series…but we swear we didn’t choose the name because of the movies!

As much as we love Star Wars, we are quick to criticize what didn’t work as well.  Hello, Ewoks?  Clone Wars?  Jar Jar Binks?!!

Samuel L. Jackson asked that his character, Mace Windu, carry a purple light sabre. George Lucas granted his request.

Last Halloween, I convinced The Husband to dress up as Darth Vader.  I wanted to dress the kids as Luke, Chewbacca and Han Solo, or maybe as Yoda, R2-D2and C-3PO.  I never got that far in the planning.  Maybe this year we’ll do it.

I get to be Leia.

Original DC Metro Moms post.
Michelle doesn’t usually show her geeky, Star Wars-loving side at her blog Wife and Mommy.

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Do you tell your child he/she is brilliant?  Beautiful or wonderful or splendid or <<insert accolade here>>?

Arrogance is a real turn-off to me, so I am careful to give praise only if it’s genuinely merited.  I don’t have a problem telling my kid that a craft they’ve done is awesome when it is, in fact, awesome.  When they bring home a piece of crap, or work that I suspect was done mostly by the teacher, I don’t say much.

So will my kids feel inadequate because I don’t give out praise and compliments excessively?  I certainly hope not.  Nor do I want be like my own parents who used to ask what happened to the other 2 points when I would come home with a test score of 98%.  I just don’t want to be the bad guy trying to balance my kids before they become too big for their britches.

I hope instead my kids will understand the value of truthful compliments and that not everything they do is worthy of praise.  I hope to teach them that super accomplishments don’t necessarily grant them automatic entry into theJustice League. And I hope they will always know that I think they are Truly Amazing.

Finding the middle road of raising kids that have just the right size ego is proving difficult.  I hope I figure it out before their heads burst…or before they end up feeling totally worthless.

First, my Korean mother was here visiting (all in all it was a great visit.  We only almost got into a big blow-out fight one time!).

Second, I was reading the latest greatest book for my online book club, From Left to Write.  If You Knew Suzy by Katherine Rosman is one of the books this month, and I dove into it quickly.  Here is a little synopsis of the book from the publisher’s page, to give you an idea of what was the stimulus for aforementioned head spinning:

Faced with the loss of her mother, Suzy, to cancer at sixty, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman longs to find answers to the questions that we all wrestle with after losing someone we love. So she does what she does best: she opens her notebook and starts investigating.

I am fortunate my own mother is alive and healthy and I hope she will be around for many years to come.  I also hope that I will be around for a long, long time for my own children.  This book, however, had me wondering what my own daughter Cupcake might say about me some day if she were to eulogize me at my funeral.  I know, totally morbid, but it’s the thought loop that my head was stuck on…

Will Cupcake talk about my odd habits, such my inability to keep socks on my feet if I am not wearing shoes?  Will the strangeness of  idiosyncrasies stick in her mind some day as funny things to laugh about as she remembers me?

Or maybe the eulogy will be about the way I adore her and her brothers…my desire for The Very Best in Life for them, and my willingness to work hard for them to have the opportunities for those things.  I hope she will recognize that I only want what is best for her and her brothers, even if she is unable to see that while in the moment.

Maybe the great love shown between her father and me will be remembered in her words…how the marriage between her parents is a commitment and a choice we make every day to one another.  I hope and pray that our example of love, commitment, and marriage will the measuring stick to which she chooses her own partner and know how she is to be treated.

I don’t know what Cupcake (or anyone, really) will say about me some day.  I hope, however, that reflecting on her mother’s life is something that will give her great pause as she realizes my life was worth living because of the people I am surrounded by today.

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This post was inspired by the book, If You Knew Suzy by Katherine Rosman.  You can read this and other fantastic posts inspired by Ms. Rosman’s work on From Left to Write.   A copy of this book was given to me by the publisher for this book club.