Balance

I've generally had good balance, although after the twins were born, I feel like my equilibrium is off. To carry this metaphor to it's intended place -- I am now going to embark on the balancing act of a lifetime: going back to work full time after being a stay at home mom. The ultimate high wire balancing act - the stakes are high, the potential for disaster looms, yet so does the chance to soar.

Until I chose to stay home full time after the twins were born, my self-worth was very much tied to my career. Who I was depended on what I did. Even for a time after staying at home, my self-worth was so tied. So much so that it was a very difficult time for me, self-esteem-wise, if I 'd had any time at all to really think about it. Being suddenly cut off from people I had spent 40+ hours a week with was very hard. I found it difficult to know how to make new connections or what to talk about when I did. Once we moved back home to Reno, this transition became much easier. And I was able to develop new things to excel in (one, I hope, being raising three independent minded girls!)

Now I am starting the climb up the long, long ladder to the wire in the sky - a fulfilling career outside the home. I'm still near the bottom, taking one step at a time. The prospects look exciting and scary. I am at once full of anticipation and self-doubt. When I get there, I hope to be able to look straight ahead, embracing change with strength, and not look down with regret and longing for past times.

A working mom: the ultimate high wire balancing act.

Homeowners beware....

There is a dirty little secret out there the banks and the government don't want you to know about. They want you to think how great there are being - teaming up to help homeowners in these hard times to lower mortgages. All in a little program called Making Homes Affordable.

Basically, if you call your mortgage company to ask for some help with your mortgage, before any other type of help will be considered, they steer you towards Making Homes Affordable. MHA is based on calculations that your mortgage + homeowner's insurance + property taxes be more than one-third of your new lower income. If this is the case, they will get about an hours worth of other data from you and 30 days later, send you some paperwork.

What they don't want you to know is that if you do take advantage of this program, your credit rating will be destroyed causing any other debt you have to come due, causing bankruptcy. Is this nasty little fact written anywhere? NO! It is not.

My husband and I dodged a bullet here. Thank god he knows how to research programs on the internet. Starting in December, I began my quest to ask Bank of America for assistance on our mortgage. Due to a restructuring of my husband's salary and other issues, we needed help. What we asked for was a few months forbearance - a break, basically. We just wanted them to tack the next 6 months of payments on to the end of the mortgage. After many transfers, disconnected lines and telling and retelling of our story, I was told that was not possible. First we had to see if our mortgage itself could be changed, through Making Homes Affordable. After a total of 7 hours on the phone over 4 phone calls, we had passed the preliminary hoops and were told to wait for papers in the mail.

The Making Homes Affordable papers came in mid January. We opened the package, read them and started to gather up the supporting documents. Later that night, my husband walked in, white as a sheet. He said, "I've got bad news - we can't do this program." He had been researching. He felt there must be a catch - and indeed there was. Bank of America would have subordinated our 2^nd mortgage with Wells Fargo (require Wells Fargo to write-off the loan as bad debt which would appear on both of our credit ratings as ‘bad debt’). After that, our primary mortgage with Bank of America would be labeled as ‘in collections’. The net effect of “Making Homes Affordable” would be to lower our credit ratings down into the low 400s (we are both above 700 right now). A credit rating of 400 would cause all of our consumer credit to become due immediately.

On-line, he was reading story after story of families, not in too bad of shape but still needing help, absolutely decimated by this supposedly helpful government program. So, at the risk of sharing too much of our situation, I wanted to get the word out there....stay away from Making Homes Affordable.

Fun on the Slopes!

I have been having so much fun skiing with the girls. They are a real delight - very excited, responsive and brave. At the risk of sounding totally hokey, it really brings joy to my heart. Skiing has it all - the quiet down time on the chair lift for stories and games of "I spy," to the unadulterated shouts of "woo hoo" as we ski through the trees, take turns playing follow the leader or, the girls most favorite thing, "to go straight down fast!" Even though we are generally on easier slopes with them, each day, I get more and more comfortable in my own skiing. Now I can almost catch them if the do go straight down the mountain! I just love watching them try new things - and succeed! Or, if they fall, just getting up and going again.

I so rarely play with the girls. I'll read to them, but usually they play on their own while I do other things. This winter has introduced me to just how wonderfully fun they can be! Now we need to find a summer activity....

If it smells like shit...

You know when you are sitting at your computer and think, what is that smell? And you know it smells like shit, but find that hard to understand since it is 7 in the morning and no one else is around. So I get up, open the curtains, turn around and yes, indeed, there is a nice pile of dog shit under my desk. A little love present from our Christmas "miracle," Sparky.

Let's go back 4 days - to Christmas evening. It's been a day of joy, general wreckage of the living room, food, movies and . . . wait, what is that outside? There is a flash of white by the back door. Is it Santa - did he forget to drop off something? No, it is a black and white dog - a very small, freezing cold, terrified dog.

Have I mentioned that our yard borders on open desert - you know, sagebrush, dirt and coyotes? Yes, this dog was terrified with good reason. So I go outside with some of the the Christmas ham and spend about 30 minutes coaxing him out from under the snow covered patio furniture. Get him in, set up a dog crate, post his picture out there for the owners to find him and put him in the laundry room for the night.

Fast forward 4 days. Yep, Sparky is still here...leaving me presents. One thing I can say about him is that he has changed my view of small dogs. This guy doesn't bark all the time (only if he is in his crate and doesn't want to be). He hasn't once snapped at the 3 kids or 2 dogs. He's put up with being chased around by Kippen, our 70 pound bundle of puppy, and being wrapped in a blanket and put in a doll beds by QueenBee.

And he is hysterical! His most favorite thing to do is sit in anyone's lap and occasionally lick whatever he can find (neck,arm, hand, keyboard). He was clearly rewarded for dancing around on his hind legs by his owners and will do that forever. He tries to play with Kippen and Kaela's toys, but the balls are as big as his head. Sparky really is a sweetheart. But he has this way of shooting poops out so fast, it's crazy. I mean, he wasn't under my desk but for 2 seconds before we put him outside. What is that about?

Today, a new owner will come take him home (we won't mention the poop issue). He will be king of the roost there - no other dogs, one kid. And our life will go back to the same calm it was before Sparky entered our life (you know, the one with - everyone sing with me: 3 little girls, 2 black dogs, and 1 albino garter snake).

Maui: To Do and Not to Do

To do:

Go to Baby Beach in Lahaina - shallow water, no waves, other kids to play with - hours of fun with little intervention needed by parents.

Not to do:

Forget your book when you take the kids to Baby Beach. This

leads to ridiculous amounts of pictures being taken since you are bored without your book.

To do:

Play hide and seek under the huge banyan tree in Lahaina.

Not to do:

Don't let the kids play by themselves - join in. There is nothing like the joy in the girls' eyes when they find mommy! And it is very quiet to hide for a while.

To do:

Go to the community pools. Maui has an amazing system of community pools that are free! And heated, with showers and bathrooms. And most come with playmates for the children. Some are big and fancy (with fountains), some are small, but perfect because the kids can touch the

bottom in the whole pool.

Not do to:

Reprise - remember your book or magazine - we were at one pool for 3 hours!

To do:

Practice snorkeling in the pool and then at Baby Beach for maximum children's snorkeling success. Put up with the endless moving of the snorkel from the mask to the goggles, to the mask, to the goggles, flippers on, flippers off. It is worth it for the kids to have a positive experience early on.

Not to do:

Forget to label the snorkel equipment for each child. Otherwise your time spent adjusting masks and fins will quadruple.

To do:

Eat a fish sandwich at the Fish Market in Paia. They are amazing. The wait is totally worth it. The community seating is fun.

Not to do:

Expect kids who don't even like fishsticks to eat a fish sandwich. They have really good burgers, too, from local beef.

To do:

Go to Ulua beach, in Wailea. Great snorkeling for grownups, and maybe for kids if it is calm. Fabulous surf for boogie boards. Soft, soft sand. And bathrooms and showers!

Not to do:

Leave in a hurry. You want to have time to play on the grassy hill across from the showers. It is perfect for royal queens and princess to hold court, with towels tied as gowns and royal robes. Also a fabulous picture spot.

Aloha!

Same Crap, Different Place, Just Smaller Location

At the risk of getting my head whacked off for actually complaining about a vacation to Maui, here goes. And I am not complaining about the whole thing - most everything was great fun: new and exciting things, warm weather and water, and no snow.

But try taking two four year olds and a six year old anywhere, really, and you get the usual complaints, whines, etc. Top that off with the younger two going through this thing right now where they only want mommy ("I want to sit by mommmmyyyy") and you get a mom who needs a vacation from a vacation.

I think at this point (day 7) what we are dealing with is sheer tiredness. So we had a "lazy" day - meaning no beach or driving anywhere but a leisurely morning at the condo, then walking to the aquarium, then lunch out...you get the idea. But somewhere along the way, someone forgot to tell the girls that leisurely morning means you don't fight, pinch each other, complain about having to eat your whole breakfast, brush teeth, put clothes on, not getting to listen to the whole book-on-tape. Really, I could go on and on.

Then there is the aquarium - the end all, be all of distractions for whiners, right? Nope. LittleBug immediately wants to go to the "tunnel" (apparently she heard me talking the day before about the plexiglases tunnel at the aquarium) and asks incessantly to go to the tunnel. Every exhibit of really cool fish, octopus, seahorses, "I want to to to the tunnel." Look girls, sharks, "When can we go to the tunnel?" When we finally get to the tunnel, I'm thinking that I can sit down and relax and watch the girls marvel at the sharks and rays going overhead. Nope. Almost immediately, LittleBug says, "I want to go through the tunnel." I am not kidding.

But, I digress. If there was a way to just have the great parts of a vacation, it would be amazing. The shrieking and dashing away from the surf and waves, the proudness of learning how to snorkel, the silliness of running from the tiny little crabs popping out of their holes on the beach, and playing hide & seek under the huge banyan tree in Lahaina, all lit up with Christmas lights. These are all fabulous memories. I wouldn't trade them for anything.

But, with the good, comes the bad, I suppose. Being in a condo smaller than our home, being tired and hungry (apparently all the time, but not for whatever we are eating), plus still having to follow rules gets old. Then the whining and fighting begins. Top that off with the fact that I am also used to more space and alone time and something has got to give.

And it did - it was called movie night.

Venturing forth....

On her own. For the first time ever, LadyBug, one of my twins, is doing something on her own. She is starting ballet class.

This was no easy decision - she had to give up gymnastics, which she loves very much. But she has had this idea for a few months now. Ballet is her thing.

I took her to a class to try it out and it was probably the cutest thing I've ever seen. She was younger than the other girls, and it turned out that all the other girls had at least a year of dance already. But she did it all - when Miss Diane would put her in a position, she wouldn't move. She held the position. She watched the teacher and the other girls and figured things out. In the end, even the teacher was impressed and said that she could do this class if she wanted to (and skip the intro class). So this weekend we will buy her ballet slippers and leotard and on Tuesday she will be venturing forth to her first activity without her twin.