family

42 Days.

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

“I give myself very good advice but I very seldom follow it. That explains the trouble that I’m always in” ~ Alice in Wonderland

42 days.  In the same breath it feels like tomorrow and far away all at once.  In 42 days I am running the Color Run in Baltimore and my goal is to run the whole thing.  But in order to do that, I need to get serious.  And lately, it doesn’t feel like I have been at all, at least not about running and exercise, or even my life in general.

I guess, in a way, you can say that I’ve been back sliding.  The worst part is, I saw it coming and honestly did nothing to stop it.  I KNOW what I am supposed to do in certain situations, yet I tend to make the complete opposite choice.  I could have kept going, could have pushed through and gone running even on the days when I was tired, but I was preoccupied with other things.  Things that were, frankly, not as important. I wish I knew why I did it.  But I don’t, and I have to stop thinking that if I concentrate hard enough I can change the past.

It’s hard sometimes, to find that motivation that we seek to keep going.  I look on Pinterest for a quote to get me going, or seek advice from  friend.  But sometimes it just doesn’t work. What I really need, sometimes, is someone to just tell me to stop looking behind, only look forward, and get off my ass and go.  Sure I’ll be tired, sure it will hurt, but the way I’ll feel when I accomplish what I want will erase all of that immediately.  For the past two weeks I haven’t run a lot because my foot hurts.  But what happened to the weeks I was doing it before?  I’m sure my foot hurt then as well, but why am I letting myself use it as an excuse now?  I mean, really, if I look deep down inside, I know why.  But frankly, I just don’t want to face it.

I’ve come so far, since January, since summer, that I don’t want to wind up back there again.  And yet, I’m letting myself gradually slink and slide back that way?  And for what?  Why is this so hard?  I guess, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

I wish I didn’t need to look outside of myself so often for some form of validation, but even at the ripe old age of 32, I still do.  Hell, half the time I still feel like a teenager, worrying that everyone is starting at me, or talking about me, etc.  I know even my friends judge, because I know I’m guilty of it too, which makes it so hard to just be ME sometimes. I think the saddest thing is that I know who I am , I really do, but I have yet to feel like I can be truly MYSELF around anyone.

This morning, I had this moment (more like 2 hours) of just pure bliss.  As I was heading downtown with the sun shining, music blaring, windows down, I just felt sublimely happy; the way I was feeling a few weeks ago.  I was heading to pick up my race packet for a 5K a friend and I are doing tomorrow and just thinking about doing the race made me happy.  I don’t know what it is about running that is making me so euphoric, especially when I am basically just walking really fast (yup, I’m that slow), but why do I let myself get away from that feeling?  Why do I let myself stop?  Why I am looking for a quick burst of happiness from some other arena instead of concentrating on this?

This goes back to my previous post too, about the not half-assing my life anymore.  I’ve looked up how to train, I’ve looked up what I need to do to help (not cure) my plantar fasciitis, but yet I don’t do it.  Deep down, no matter what I do, I feel like I am still that lazy girl who wants to just sit in the comfy chair and daydream about things that will never be, plan – but not do, and basically take the easy way out.  And the sad thing is that I am letting myself and letting the people around me let me do it!

I don’t want to be that girl anymore.  I don’t want to be that girl from last winter who could barely climb a flight of stairs without feeling like I was going to die.  I don’t want to be that girl from the spring that put work before herself and her family.  I don’t want to be that girl from the summer who basically couldn’t think for herself and do what she knew needed to be done.

I know what I want to be.  I just feel like I have no way to get there.

What About Me?

/ Cassie / 1 Comment

“Be miserable.  Or motivate yourself.  Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” ~Wayne Dyer

I started this summer as I start every summer…with great plans.  I was going to accomplish so much.  The house was going to be cleaned and organized. I was going to go to the gym every day.  I was going to work with Max on his writing and Ollie on his…demoness stubborn personality.  I was going to read great books and write great things.  I was going to plan for the next school year.  All my centers would be made in advance.

I was going to do great things this summer.

Here’s what I have actually accomplished: I read two books, organized the toys in Max’s closet, and gone to the gym a smattering of times.

All I can really say is “what the hell happened?!?!?!?!?”

I have been extremely lazy, and probably downright selfish, this summer and I really don’t like it.  I was supposed to make positive contributions to myself and my family and I have done nothing.

Fortunately, the best advice anyone ever gave me was that every every day, every hour, every minute is new…a time in which you can be reborn.

So tonight I signed up for the next Color Run in Baltimore (to be held in November).  And tomorrow I will make my way back to the gym.

And each day I will accomplish something else because I can.  I’m fortunate to know that I have the time to do this while others don’t.  I am one of the lucky ones.

It’s time to get back on track.  I can do this.

I have to do this.

On Loss

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

“Stand there dance with a memory. The caption reads, “It’s all over now.” ~Appleseed Cast

I guess I should start with the short version.  My father is dying.  Was that too blunt?  I don’t really know what to say or how to say it in a nicer way; tiptoeing around the subject as though it will make it better.  Due to years and years of healthy issues, and psychological issues, emotional issues, mental issues (you get it) he is currently in hospice and only has days left, in the best possible case.

I could focus on the bad things, that’s always so easy to do because they bring forth the most feeling and pain, hurt and regret, anger and animosity.  But I’ll try not to.

Bottom line, he wasn’t always very nice to me, and this is putting it in the best way possible, but everything he did or said made me who I am today, and I kind of like me.

Bottom line, he wasn’t always the best father, but there are times, distinct memories that are good, that I can believe he really cared: coaching t-ball, going to the beach, teaching me to play cards. I will choose to hold on to these things and remember them when things get too dark.

Bottom line: there were times when I down-right hated him and not in a normal teenage angst kind of way; in a grown-up unhealthy kind of way.  But hate is not the opposite of love, not caring is, so essentially I still cared.  I still had feelings and emotions surrounding this man and this relationship, which, in a small way, means I was still living and still willing to fight for something.

I’ve been handling things as best I could, trying not to fall apart or dwell on the past, but my insomnia has come back and I am not getting much sleep.  At night I don’t have anyone or anything to occupy my thoughts and that’s when the worry and anxiety sets in.  I am most worried about my younger brothers, who essentially had a different father than I did and their grief is so much more profound and raw than I feel mine to be.

I’ve been feeling like my skin is too tight, like I’m itching to do something, anything to rebel against this and to prove that I am still very much alive, even when surrounded by all this death.  I need to break free, go crazy, at least just for a short amount of time, to prove that there is something still left in me.

Do we all have things we wish we would have said or done before it was too late?  Yes, of course, but I feel like in this situation, I wish I could say things to simply make him feel better about moving on.  I want to tell him that I hope wherever he is or wherever he is going he finds the peace within himself that he couldn’t find here with us.

Does any of this really matter?  I feel like I have made my peace with it, and while I can talk about it, I don’t hold on to it, or feel (overly) bitter or harbor feelings that are going to weigh me down for the rest of my life.  At the end of the day he was my dad and no one else in the world can make that claim.

And that’s got to mean something.

Why I (kinda) hate mother’s day

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“God could not be everywhere, and therefor he made mothers.” ~Rudyard Kipling

I feel like I should start this post with a disclaimer.  We celebrate mother’s day in my household.  I make my husband buy gifts for his mom and I make my kids buy gifts for their “grammy”.  While I don’t actually expect gifts, I do hope that everyone could just be a little nicer, quieter and cleaner just for this one day.  With that being said I am not a very big fan of this holiday, and I’m a mom.

Some might say the reason I don’t really get into mother’s day is that I must not have a very good relationship with my mother.  And that’s the truth, I don’t.  My mom always had other things to worry about, more pressing engagements to attend to, more important life moments to get involved in.  I’m pretty sure I was resented for being born and messing up the life she could have had.  I also wasn’t a very good child, or a very pretty child, or really that extraordinary in any way.  I tended to blend in and shy away from attention while my mom tried her best to shine.  My brothers, all of them, were always closer to her.  Maybe they understood her better than I could.  Maybe she understood them better than she could me.

This is not the part where you feel sorry for me.  Everything that happened to me growing up shaped who I am today.  Sometimes people have personality conflicts, and while we think there is always a bong between a mother and a child that no one can break, it’s not true.  I wasn’t abused, or neglected, or mistreated by my mother.  I had a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and someone always there to sign a permission slip when I needed.  We simply never found a way to connect and that’s ok.  We were so far opposite that we couldn’t even attract.  Quite honestly, though, all of this is besides the point.

Now, all these experiences with my mom have completely shaped the way I “mother” my two little ones.  I make sure I make them a priority while I still have a semblance of a life.  I try to get interested in the things they are (I can name every Transformer and Thomas character) and share my interests with them.  No matter if it’s been a bad day, good day, frustrating day, relaxing day, there is never a doubt that I love them and they love me.  Being a mother is the thing I am the most proud of and my most important job.  I work very hard to try and be the best mother I can be every day of my kid’s lives.  Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, but I never stop putting forth the effort.

That brings me, in a very long winded way, to why I’m not a fan of Mother’s Day.  Plain and simple, we should not choose to focus on the work and dedication of mothers on one day during the year.  Mothers should be revered, loved, cherished every day.  Mother’s don’t get a day off, not from the worry, love, guilt, frustration, exhaustion, and stickiness that is parenting.  Not even on mother’s day.

I sometimes feel like giving mothers just a day (or dads just a day, or women and African Americans just a month) it gives us a reason to slack off the rest of the year.  Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t love the beaded necklace my 4 year old made me, or don’t kinda expect breakfast in bed tomorrow, but why only this day that these things happen?  Then again, I am a crazy mom.  I even bought my kids gifts for tomorrow because frankly, without them, I wouldn’t be celebrating this day at all.

I really do hope everyone who reads this enjoys their mothers day, whether they are a mother or not.  But remember to try, some random day in October, to call your mom (aunt, grandma, caregiver) up just to tell them you appreciate them and love them.  Mother’s day is once a year, but a mother’s love is year round.

In case you missed it: My moments of joy this week

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

During May I decided, at the urging of a friend, to come up with a list of ten accomplishments that I could complete during the month of May (see original post here).  One of my challenges is to take a picture everyday in order to document a moment I felt happy.  This will hopefully remind me that no matter how bad a day was, there was a moment of joy.

I have been posting the photos to instagram and twitter, but just in case you missed them, here are my pictures from the last five days.

May 1, 2013

It seems that as the boys get older, they get along less and less.  It was so awesome to actually get a picture of them sitting together happy and smiling (of course, it could have something to do with the donut and ice cream, but that’s beside the point).

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May 2, 2013

It was a beautiful day and we decided to eat lunch outside at school.  There are so many moments during the day that I **think** I hate my job, it was nice to be reminded that maybe, just maybe, I actually like what I do.

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May 3, 2013

Heading home from work on a Friday is always a moment to celebrate, but having it be gorgeous out makes it even better.

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May 4, 2013

My view on Saturday morning while having alone time with the little ones.  It was peaceful and serene and simply wonderful.  It’s moments like these I know I am on the right path.

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May 5, 201

Walking to the park with the family, we came across a yard that hadn’t been mowed in a long time.  Even at 32, I still make wishes on dandelions and even believe they may come true.

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