Manners and Being Kind

I pride myself in being someone with pretty good manners. It may not be the most humble thing to say, but I feel that if you were to ask someone about my character they would say that I am 'nice' and perhaps even 'polite.' I can remember my mom and dad encouraging me to say 'please' and 'thank you' constantly when I was a kid, so much so that it seemed unnatural NOT to be courteous to someone. I'm sure I had my moments, just like anyone else- times when I was grumpy and unappreciative to the lady at the grocery store or was in too much of a hurry to thank a gas station attendant- but, overall, I think I've done a pretty good job. It just seems that being kind and courteous is the right thing to do- which surprises me that so many people have not received this memo. This post is probably going to get super judge-y and will most likely defeat the whole purpose of writing it in the first place but, since it is my post and freedom of speech is a thing, then I guess it's better to do it here than anywhere else.

I have noticed lately that Tenley is becoming more polite. I, like my mother before me, have the same broken tagline of "What do you say?" when my kids ask for something or after they receive what they have asked for. As small children, they used to look at me blankly or, on some really great instances, yell at me like I was an old person who couldn't hear, a la "I SAID I want a CUP OF MILK!" My favorite times still happen once in awhile where they will ask for something and I will just stand around and wait for them to say 'please.' Many of those times they continue to go about what they are doing and, after they finally realize that their wishes have not been granted, they look at me and put two and two together. A simple 'please' causes me to spring to action, grabbing whatever it is that they need. We are getting to that delicate place in their young lives, though, that they can start doing a lot more for themselves. They are getting very close to learning that a 'please' will not get me to walk across the house to get the water bottle that is sitting JUST out of reach of their little grasps. The 'please' is appreciated, but does not always guarantee success. If someone came up to you and said, "Hey, can I please murder you?" you wouldn't say, "Well, since you asked nicely..." You get what I mean. Getting back to Tenley, I feel that there has been some sort of parenting breakthrough because now, more often than not, she is saying not only 'please' but 'thank you' or 'thanks, Mom!' or on occasion 'thank you very much, mommy!' to which I pat myself on the back and think, "I'm finally doing something right!" And I'm taking full credit for this because there is no way that her teacher is having that much of an effect on her, right? Right? Her teacher is pretty great, but I'm still going to claim this one. Luke, on the other hand, still has a ways to go...


Most of the time, when people have the sense to have good manners, they are also prone to be kind. In my mind, it is better to be kind than not to be. A lot of times, people tell me that I'm "too nice." What's wrong with that, though? I don't feel that (most of the time) I am getting walked all over. I want people to be nice to me, so why wouldn't I be nice to others? There are times, though, that being kind is a complete freaking chore. I ran across a meme on Facebook today posted by one of my sorority sisters that reads as follows:

Oh my goodness, is this not the truth? We've all had those days where we are just pushed to our limit and all we want to do is punch someone in the throat and use the fact that they were being a total jack bag to justify it. Like, why do I always have to be the bigger person? 9 times out of 10, when I am attacked for something totally unnecessary or someone is trying to engage me in an argument, I just close my eyes and remain calm because what is arguing going to do? People that enjoy arguing usually do not want to stop to consider anyone else's opinions, so what is the use of arguing with them? I just tell myself that I know that I am right and it doesn't matter if no one else thinks so. But that 1 time out of 10 that I just can't hold it in? Watch out. Because you may find yourself down a testicle or, at the very least, viewing smoke exploding from my ears. Because a person can only take so much before they lose their ever-loving mind. It takes a lot to set me off, and some people can push my buttons MUCH faster than others...I will leave the names of those button pushers up to you to surmise. Some general rules of thumb when dealing with me in the hopes of not pushing the few buttons that make me explode:

1. Don't ask for my opinion and then argue with me as to why my opinion is wrong or not good enough. If you aren't going to take my advice or even consider it, DON'T ASK ME. For the record, I am a counselor by trade, so a lot of the time my advice is fairly decent. I'm not talking about anything political or religious here. I'm talking about when you ask me about things like whether you should wear a red shirt or a black shirt and, when I give you my opinion, you argue with me about all the reasons you SHOULDN'T wear the one I suggest. Then why did you ask me? And, for the record, I could probably care less what color shirt you wear.

2. Don't expect me to be your secretary. I would expand on this but it will literally make me cut the next person that comes in here out of pure frustration, so I will spare said next person that horrible fate.

3. Don't be Tyra Banks. Just don't.

I don't think the above stipulations are that difficult to avoid. Basically listen when I have something to say (especially if you ask me to say something), keep track of your own stuff, and don't be a crazy amazon woman. Simple enough, right?

All of this leads me to the point that I am trying to convey. Don't be an asshole. A nicer way to put it is to be kind to others and they will be kind to you. When the Golden Rule was created, I don't think that it took rocket science to realize that it was good stuff. If you want to live your life being a jerk then good luck- there will be a special place in purgatory waiting for you where all you will hear are my kids yelling, "I SAID I wanted a MILK CUP!" That should be enough for you to say 'please,' 'thank you,' and think before you speak. It not, then God help your soul.

Cheap Thrills

Sorry to disappoint- this post will not be about any subject that is racy, tawdry, or even exciting. It is a post about the exact opposite, actually- all of the things that, in my increasingly old age, provide me with more pleasure or satisfaction than they should. Whether it is that first sip of coffee in the morning, free accordion folders at work, or walking into my house after a long day and being thrilled that my dog didn't poop somewhere, I am finding that it doesn't take much to excite me.

Let's tackle the coffee first. I was never a coffee drinker before I had kids. There's just something about being up 75 times a night with a nursing baby that makes crack in a cup that much more appealing. Now that I am back to working full time, I need two cups of coffee throughout my morning in order to function properly. My morning routine consists of falling out of bed, showering, getting Tenley up and making her waffles, cramming some cereal and the all-important fudgeround down my throat, dressing Luke, and getting out of the house. Did you notice that coffee does not fall anywhere into that routine? This is because coffee is meant to be ENJOYED and scalding my throat trying to gulp it down in the 7 minutes and 45 seconds that I give myself for breakfast does not scream "happy morning" to me. So, I arrive at work in a zombie-like state, turn on my computer, and grab my coffee cup to trudge to the Keurig in our office kitchen. Just hearing the machine start to brew opens my eyeballs a bit wider and, once the percolation starts, it activates whatever part of my brain that allows me to think straight. I think it's Pavlovian. Once the brew is complete, I splash some creamer in it and take it back to my desk so that I can check email and have that first sip. And that first sip is always SO GOOD. And way more exciting than it should be. By the time I'm on my second cup my body is warm, I'm functioning at a high level, and I even feel for brief moments that I could flip cars if I needed to. So thank you, coffee, for being the kick in the rear I need each morning so that I don't sleep at my desk and ultimately get fired.

The next item on my excitable list: free stuff. Prime example: I was sitting in my office today and Tracie, our Guidance secretary, came by my office and said that the media center specialist had wheeled boxes of accordion file folders down to the office and that they were free for us to pick through before he took them to another office. I ROCKETED out of my chair to get first dibs. I have been meaning to buy accordion folders to sort the kids' various school papers and old bills. Those things are expensive and now I can get them for free? Heck, yes- sign me up! I think everyone else thought I was crazy and I'm pretty sure that I could have had the whole cart if I wanted them, but I didn't want to be greedy. I have some dignity, for crying out loud. It's not often that these opportunities arise but, when they do, they are tops on my list of cheap thrills.

This brings me to the dog. When I last wrote about my dogs, Zoey was still a young, spry bulldozer of a terrier. Since the loss of my dear Rudy (RIP), she has developed "the diabetes" and requires two shots of insulin a day. Not just one, but TWO SHOTS A DAY. As you can imagine, giving her these shots is not the highlight of my day. I dread it. I've been doing it now for a year and a half, and there is no end in sight. Without the shots, Zoey shakes and pees all over the place. But, when she has the shots and she is regulated, it is like she has been injected with water from the fountain of youth. I swear that these shots are not only keeping her alive, but magically extending her life and she will outlive me. Maybe I should start injecting myself with it as well. Anyway, even though she is regulated, it does not stop her from having random accidents in the house if I'm gone for too long. And, of course, it's not just accidents of the "number 1" variety, but there's often some "number 2" accidents as well. This presents several issues. First, dog poop closed up in a house with the heat on all day is not a good smell. In fact, it's pretty disgusting. Second, my daughter has a crazy gag reflex when it comes to poop. She is 7 and still has to have me take care of her back end after having a bowel movement because, if she sees the product of said movement, she gags and almost vomits. I'm not kidding. I had to pick her up from school once because she went "number 2," forgot and looked at it, and puked on the restroom floor. I was so concerned when the school nurse called and said that she had been sick until she told me that, when asked, Tenley said that she had "seen something yucky" and my whole attitude changed. I just said, "Oh yeah, she probably saw her poop. She's fine." She was sent home anyway. Because of this extreme aversion to all things poop, Tenley is extremely sensitive to any surprises that we might come home to compliments of the dog. We walked in the house the other day and, as soon as I walked in the door, I could smell the telltale signs of dog doo. I immediately told Tenley to stay in the kitchen until I could get rid of it, and when I came back in the kitchen she was gagging with Luke's stocking hat pulled to her chin trying to walk to her room without seeing the poop. This resulted in her walking into a wall because she couldn't see anything. So, as you can surmise, coming home after a long day and finding no dog poop to take care of gives me more thrills than riding the Tower of Terror.

Some other items on my cheap thrills list: my head hitting the pillow at night, McDonald's Diet Coke, finding a new show on my DVR that I actually have time to watch, and Edwardo's pizza. Also a clean kitchen. I realize that this post shows my age and that I am probably the least exciting person on the planet. The thing is, I'm OK with that. I love my life and the people that are in it. I may not be a movie star or a high powered CEO, but I am also fortunate enough to not have to worry about a lot of things that others do, that negative excitement that nobody wants. I'm a pretty lucky gal, and if these are the types of thrills that make me happy then I think I'm doing alright.

Halloween Then and Now

A very dear person in my life has encouraged me to start blogging again and, since I have kind of morphed back into a semblance of the life that I had when I started this blog, I thought that maybe it would be a good idea. Many, MANY things have changed since my last blog post. I have not one but TWO children who are now 7 and 5 and I'm down a dog (and, for the record, a husband). I've been a stay-at-home mom, a Shipt shopper, did a brief stint trying to teach Chinese kids English via the internet, and have landed full-circle back in the MHS Guidance Office helping wayward youth one tissue at a time. Life is starting to make sense again and, for the most part, all of these changes have been good. I don't want to lament on the changes in my personal life at this point so, instead, I will lament on the changes of the very holiday on which I am writing this post: Halloween through the years of my life.

To me, Halloween has been an overall insignificant holiday. Much like Labor Day and Memorial Day, I never put much thought into it as a kid. I don't ever remember getting super excited about picking costumes and it never failed to be cold and rainy on the night of actual trick or treating. Costumes from my youth included recycling whatever ensemble I had worn for recital in order to pose as a "ballerina" or a "dancer." I also had the privilege of experiencing every 80's kid's Halloween right of passage: the costumes containing the plastic mask with nose holes just big enough to keep you from suffocating but just small enough that your breath turned to condensation on the inside of it and, rather than suffocate, you would run the risk of drowning in your own sweaty snot. And don't get me started on how unexcited my mom would be to take us trick-or-treating. I think she would have rather had a root canal but, being the wonderful mom that she is, would suck it up to take us around my grandparents' block shouting things like "Remember to say thank you!" or "Be careful on those steps!" as we darted up to the houses. After we (read: she) had had enough, we would go back to my grandparents' house and help hand out candy. Upon returning home, my brother and I would take all of our candy and line it up on the living room floor across from one another. We would silently check out each other's stashes and begin the long process of haggling over candy to trade. This task took forever, and usually ended in me threatening him bodily harm if he didn't trade me his Reese Cups for my disgusting black or orange wrapped mystery candy. I remember my friend Jeanette telling me that her mom would take their candy, spread it out on the table, and inspect if for signs of tampering. When I asked my dad about that, he just said "Chew carefully in case there's a needle stuck in something" and that was all the advice I needed. Something to note here- I was never impaled or poisoned from eating Halloween candy, so I will consider my trick-or-treating endeavors a 100% success.

As I grew older, Halloween traditions changed. My parents live on a lake on a road that has no outlet and only old people residing on it. For this reason, we never had trick-or-treaters. Mom and dad would always buy one bag of Fun Size Snickers bars and would throw them in the freezer "just in case" we had any kids come by. That bag of Snickers was never needed and, instead, would dwindle over time whenever someone's sweet tooth started calling. In middle and high school, I would inevitably end up at my grandparents' house in town, helping to hand out candy and watching my younger cousins trick or treat. This was all well and good, but I couldn't help but wonder if Halloween would ever be exciting again or if the pinnacle of my spooky experiences had happened while wearing that sweaty My Little Pony mask all those years ago. And then I went to college.

Halloween in college and in your single 20s is probably the most fun holiday on the planet. For those of you Mean Girls fans, there is a quote in there that states "In the real world, Halloween is when kids dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it." These words were never truer than it is during Halloween as a girl from ages 18 to 25-ish. Gone are the days of suffocating masks and present are the days of "Sexy Police Officer" or "Sexy Dorothy" or "Sexy Ghostbuster" or, my personal favorite, a "Garden Ho"...all costumes that I have donned over the years. I can remember going to my first frat Halloween party at ATO during my freshman year at IU. I dressed as Britney Spears from the Baby One More Time music video and had a great time guzzling jungle juice and stumbling around the house. Fast forward to my senior year of college where I had the best roommates on the planet. We were finally old enough to go to the bars and the bars was WHERE IT WAS AT on Halloween. Everyone dressed up and went out- it was pretty much the most fun night of the year. We decided, after a last minute trip to Wal-Mart, to dress as Tom Cruise in Risky Business- White button-down shirts, tighty whities, tube socks, and sunglasses. The four of us went out to Happy Hour for dinner before getting ready, and ended up at Upstairs (before I started working there) to play pool before going home to dress for the night. Upon telling the bartender what we were planning to be, he opened the cabinet that housed the Upstairs Pub swag and pulled out 4 teeny tiny Upstairs Pub thongs. He told us that if we wore the thongs over our tighty whities and stood on the bar for a picture, our drinks were free all night. That was a no brainer! When we returned to Upstairs later that night, we were all wearing tube socks with no shoes, men's shirts, and Upstairs thongs over our men's underwear. At that point we probably would have stood on the roof for a picture, so the four of us clamored up on the bar to take one of the most iconic pictures that the 342 Crew has ever taken: us flashing our Upstairs thongs at the place where we spent more hours than any classroom on campus. I think that picture is still hanging up at the bar, and I could not be more proud.

Once I left college, Halloween fun still continued through my mid-twenties. This is where the various "sexy" costumes came into play. I challenge you to go to a Spirit Halloween store and find a costume for a woman that doesn't have "Sexy" in the title. Unless it's a couples costume, there are no "normal" costumes to be found. Can you just be Dorothy? Nope. You have to be "Sexy Dorothy" with a a dress cut down to your belly button and a skirt that barely covers your nether region. These are outfits that I never would have dreamed of wearing any other day of the year but, on Halloween, why not? There is something to be said for stepping out of your comfort zone and embracing your more provocative side once in a while. Plus it helps you get drinks at the bar.

This finally brings me full circle to the Halloweens you have once you produce offspring. The first few Halloweens as a new mom were ok, dressing the babies up for cute pictures and going to family parties. The fun really started, though, once my kids were old enough to trick-or-treat. I learned that it is super fun to trick-or-treat when you can basically walk out the door and go house to house instead of having to drive 10 miles to your grandparents' house in order to find a block of people that might actually have candy. I love seeing my kids' excitement as they approach each new house in anticipation of getting some great candy. I also find myself yelling, "Remember to say thank you!" and "Don't trip on those steps!" just like my mom did all those years ago. I also cringe at the thought of one of my kids exclaiming, "Ew! I don't like this candy" or throwing a fit when that one person gives mini frisbees or toothbrushes instead of candy. In those cases, I plaster a big smile on my face and try to talk over my kids' protests as I drag them to the next house. I kind of don't blame them though- I would rather these people give the kids candy with needles in them so that we could just pick the needles out and not have to worry about finding a place for yet another useless frisbee.

As I ready myself for a night of chilly trick-or-treating with my kids and our great friends, I can only be thankful for the fun that is had on this day. I will happily walk from house to house, bundled up with spiked cider in hand, and watch my kids gather the sweet treats that will inevitably spark a healthy dentist bill in just a few short months. Whether you are handing out candy, channeling your inner Sexy Dorothy, or dealing with putting sugar high kids to bed after a night of candy consumption, I wish you all a very Happy Halloween!