You get what you need when you need it most

What I learned this week

Maybe it was the fact I was home alone this week after spending several busy days with my grandsons last week. Or maybe it's hormones. Or perhaps it's the weather changing. Whatever the reason, I've been off my game for the past several days.

My primary off-game symptom has been feeling kind of down on myself about where I'm headed — or more accurately, not headed — with my writing. Having been a writer of one degree or another for the past few decades, I get that most writers get that way now and again. That's little consolation.

Wednesday, just as I was hitting bottom and frustrating even the dogs with my negative attitude all because I felt like I was writing <cuss> — if I was writing at all — I got an email notification of a new tweet on Twitter that mentioned me. As I was open to doing anything other than staring at a screen of my words that weren't stringing together satisfactorily, I clicked on over to Twitter and found this:

Tears came to my eyes. Seriously. That's how much that tweet meant to me, how much I needed to hear that my words matter, that my words make a difference somewhere, somehow, to someone.

The someone perplexed me. I have no idea who Rosie Kuhn is. I have never interacted with her on Twitter or elsewhere before. She doesn't follow me, I don't follow her. Well, we didn't before Wednesday.

But for some reason my words on being heartbroken when I learned I'd be a grandma resonated with Ms. Kuhn, possibly gave her something she needed. In return, she gave me — a total stranger — what I needed. When I needed it most.

That small tweet from her that meant big things to me was yet another in a long line of moments of late when I've gotten exactly what I needed when I needed it most. Not earthshaking victories of any sort, but confirmation what I need will come.

Because, yes, you get what you need when you need it most.

And you're reminded of that when you most need to remember it.

That is what I learned this week.

PS: I also learned this week that I want to go back to posting on Saturdays, after having taken the weekends off during the summer. Stay tuned for tomorrow's Saturday post, a feature you'll find here every Saturday going forward. I hope you enjoy it!

Today's question:

What did you learn this week?

Wherein Grandma rethinks the family bed

Our kids climb into bed with Jim and me each morning. Their sole goal? To get us to rise and shine, get up and give them breakfast.

Now, that may seem strange considering our three daughters are adults and don't live in our house. But it's not our human kids I'm talking about, it's our cat kids.

Early each morning, Abby and Isabel hop onto the foot of the bed and meow their way all the way up to our heads, demanding we notice them, love them, and, most importantly, get out of the freakin' bed and feed them. Abby in particular is the alarm kitty. If I ignore her pleas, she heads on over to my iPhone cord on the night stand and starts chewing on it, for she knows darn well that will have me up and at her in a split second.

Yesterday morning when "the girls" got into bed with us, I mentioned to Jim how crazy it would be if we let our dogs into the bed with us, too. Mickey and Lyla have their own bedroom, though, with a baby gate put up each night so they can't get out — which means they can't climb into our bed in the morning, like the cats do.

"Just think if they did," I said to Jim. "We'd have all our kids in bed with us."

Which led me to immediately mention that our real kids — our human kids, our daughters — never climbed into bed with us in the mornings. Never.

Why is that? I wondered out loud. It's not like the girls weren't allowed in our bedroom, weren't welcome to join us if they felt the need.

I remember one night in particular when Andrea definitely felt the need. It was during the summer between her fifth- and sixth-grade years at school, a scary transitional time that caused her to have nightmares. After several failed attempts to calm her fears in her own bed one night, she took me up on the offer to sleep in a makeshift bed on the floor beside ours.

That didn't work. Andie still couldn't sleep, still was afraid.

So I told her we'd turn on the television in our bedroom to the Cartoon Network — at a very low volume — to take her mind off scary things.

Regardless of volume level, though, the George of the Jungle Marathon running on the network that night was the stuff of nightmares, at least for Jim and me. ♪George, George, George of the Jungle, watch out for that tree!♪ kept us awake — and unhappy — for hours.

After a several episodes, we'd had enough. Andie apparently had, too, for she didn't balk too much when I led her back to her own bed. Where she did finally fall asleep.

Jim and I, though, couldn't fall asleep for we couldn't get ♪George, George, George of the Jungle♪ out of our heads, out of our dreams.

Never again, we told ourselves... and our girls. To this day, mentions of George of the Jungle elicit groans and grins from Jim, Andrea and myself as we recall the nightmarish marathon.

Back in those childrearing years, I was thankful the girls rarely asked to sleep in our bed and that they never woke us in the mornings by crawling under the covers with us. But now it saddens me.

It saddens me because as a grandma, I realize what Jim and I missed. The mornings when I'm visiting my grandsons and they crawl into bed with me — which is every morning when I'm at their house... and usually before the sun even considers creeping up over the horizon — are some of the sweetest moments shared with my beloved boys.

Which is one of the more important things Jim and I failed to learn when our girls were little.

There's no going back, though, no way to remedy that error we made with our children. But we can, as grandparents, make the most of the moments when our grandchildren crawl into bed with us.

I will do exactly that with open arms next week, when I'll be sleeping one room away from Bubby and Mac.

Next week I'll have four mornings to relish the slow creaking open of Gramma's bedroom door as the boys together peek in at me, then the pitter-patter of little feet scampering over to my bed while I pretend I'm asleep. Then I'll lift the covers, make room for Bubby on one side, Mac on the other. We'll snuggle for just a bit, and once they've done all the snuggling their wiggly little boy bodies can handle, we'll discuss our dreams from the night, recite our plans for the day.

I didn't get it with my girls, but I now realize with my boys that such times truly are the best part of waking up when there are children in the house.

As a parent, the family bed was never my thing, for I didn't want to be continually awakened by little kids.

As a grandparent, I can't imagine any better wake-up call.

Today's question:

Did your kids climb into bed with you in the mornings? Do your grandkids?

Grandma's grand impression

As I get older, I find that I no longer care much about impressing others. That wasn't always the case.

I recall doing my best to impress as far back as my primary school years, in particular during a fateful event featuring a frog. That should have left a lasting impression upon me the folly of trying to impress others. It didn't.

Years later, my older sister reinforced the idea that impressing others matters when she, a teen at the time and me a pre-teen, introduced me to her new boyfriend. My sister and I shared a bedroom, and she positioned me on the full bed we shared with a book in my lap. "Be sure to put on your glasses before he comes in," she said. "That way he'll think you're smart."

I did look smart. He, though, turned out to be an idiot — which my sister realized only after that boyfriend became her husband then, thankfully, ex-husband.

I still wear glasses, and I still look pretty darn smart in them. I wear them strictly to see, though, not to impress. Because, like I said, impressing others matters not one whit to me. I no longer work to impress my immediate family nor my extended family, not my friends nor strangers. Not even my boss.

Okay, the last one — my boss — doesn't really count because as a freelancer, I have no boss. I do, though, have my readers. And while I do hope to entertain and enlighten you to some degree, I certainly don't try to impress you.

Nope, impressing others is no longer important to me.

Except, that is, when it comes to my grandchildren.

You grandparents likely know what I mean. What others think of us is neither here nor there, yet what our grandchildren think of us is everything. So we do our best to impress the wee ones, performing stunts of magnificent athletic/artistic/intelligence proportion that scream "Look at me! Love me! Be impressed by me!"

And sometimes those shouts and stunts fail miserably. Or they just plain scare the <cuss> out of the kids. Which is exactly what happened not too long ago when I tried to impress Bubby with Gramma's grace and agility.

Bubby had been impressing me with his newfound acrobatic skills, when I chose to reciprocate and show him my own not-so-newfound but perhaps equally impressive moves. Specifically, I wanted Bubby to see how I could still turn a mean cartwheel, despite not having performed a cartwheel in, well, a few years, give or take a decade or three.

"Stand back," I told Bubby as I raised my arms in the air and assumed cartwheel take-off position.

My obedient grandson stood back, eyes wide and mouth ajar, as Gramma lurched forward, perfectly placed on the floor one hand then the other, then lifted one fo... oh ... lifted nothing, as my feet flat-out refused to follow the perfect lead of my hands. My cartwheel attempt and I came crashing down, much to the horror of Bubby.

"You shouldn't do that, Gramma" Bubby uttered with restrained concern. "You might hurt yourself."

I was okay, though; the only thing hurt was my pride.

But... there was no stopping me and my intent to impress.

"Well, forget the cartwheel," I told Bubby. "But Gramma can definitely still perform perfect somersaults." Sheesh, who couldn't? I thought.

Let's just say my somersault attempt was only slightly less catastrophic than my cartwheel attempt — and only because it didn't require me to become semi-airborne.

Truth is, my body weighs many, many pounds more than it once did, pounds that posed quite a challenge to my neck when I placed my head firmly on the floor and set myself in slow but purposeful forward motion in typical somersault fashion. Slow being the operative word as I felt a crunch in my neck that signaled Gramma had gone a wee bit beyond awkward on this move and had rolled right on into physically dangerous territory.

Bubby grimaced while offering "Wow, Gramma" as quickly as possible so I'd dare not attempt another roll. (Little did he know there was no way in <cuss> Gramma could have proceeded into a second roll.) Fortunately he — nor Megan — ever seemed to noticed how stiff I held my head and neck for the next several days of my visit, as I truly had hurt myself, that it was more than my pride I had been pinged in that particular attempt to impress.

From such folly, I must admit I did learn one important lesson from Bubby: Quit trying so hard.

It was later during that same visit that I realized my sister had been right all those years ago: Sporting spectacles is indeed the key to making a smart impression.

If nothing else, glasses are definitely the safest way for a grandma to make an impression — at least for this sometimes-not-so-smart grandma.

Today's question:

How have you tried — and possibly failed — to impress your grandchildren or children?

What I learned this week: Keeping the browns and the blues at bay

I love avocados. Jim hates avocados. So any avocados I buy are mine and mine alone to enjoy.

Because I usually only eat half an avocado at a time — in sandwiches, salads and so forth — the second half that I save for later often turns brown while sitting in the fridge waiting for me to nosh on it.

Not anymore.

This week I learned that if you lightly spray the cut avocado with cooking spray, it doesn't turn brown.

Seriously.

Pictorial proof is here:

The other day, I ate half an avocado on a sandwich at lunch time. I lightly sprayed the other half and stuck it in a baggie (bagging it loosely instead of having it touch the avocado flesh, just to see if the cooking spray really did work).

 

Five hours later I pulled the avocado half from the fridge to slice up for a dinner salad. It looked like this once released from its bag:

 

See? I kept the browns at bay, thanks to cooking spray. Easy-peasy.

Keeping the blues at bay isn't as easy-peasy, I learned this week.

As many of you know, my sister has been hospitalized for more than two weeks now. Yesterday she was moved from ICU to a regular floor. There was even talk she might get to go home in a day or so.

Hooray!

Just a few hours after my sister called with the good news, I got another phone call, one informing me my sister was back in ICU. She'd suffered another coughing/bleeding/nearly heart-stopping episode and had been returned to the unit where they could care for her best.

The blues instantly set in for many of us.

If only cooking spray could keep the blues away from hearts and minds as well as it keeps the browns from avocados.

That is what I learned this week.

May your weekend be grand, your browns and blues easily cured... or avoided in the first place.

Today's question:

What did you learn this week?