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 Lynn

IN which i discuss the blogging process

Today, after my spinning class, I was asked how this blogging process has affected me. It’s an interesting question as it has had far more impact on my life than I originally thought it would. I began the process as a means to get my “funny” stories written down. At that point, I had assumed that me and my “editor” would put them into some sort of organized form that would result in a book. In fact, I already had a name picked out: “Good Enough: The Chronicles of an Underachiever.” Obviously, the train has gone off the rails so I want to discuss the many ways that this blog and blogging in general has affected me.




1) Time – now obviously the blog has taken up copious amounts of time. Before this began I used to brag about how “time” was all I had as I did “nothing” all day. This has changed dramatically. Certainly writing the posts has taken up lots of time but that’s actually the least of the issue. Tweeting, responding to comments, talking to other bloggers and thinking about issues that I really never gave much thought to have eaten a massive hole in my days.







2) Weight – believe it or not, I’ve lost weight as a blogger. Had I only known 20 years ago that the sheer act of writing about issues, both yours and the world at large, would turn out to be so cathartic and that food, your main source of comfort forever, would take second place I would have started writing a lot sooner! Of course, I’m not sure that I was at a place in my life to do so. The kids took up a lot of my time and sitting down at the computer for long periods of time was a luxury for me back then. When I was at my computer, I was really big into computer games so perhaps I needed to wait until I reached this point in my life.





3) Awareness- I certainly wasn’t unaware of the many problems facing people in the world. As a matter of fact, I’m inordinately proud of the fact that I can understand and relate to the many issues that people have, even if I don’t have those issues myself. One of the many ways I have survived mentally (other than my weekly shrink appointment) is by my “I’m not even worried about it” approach to life. To have this approach, you really need to keep yourself in some sort of protective bubble. As a “fixer,” the minute I’m involved I tend to pour myself into something. This can result in an incredibly time-consuming situation not to mention the emotional maelstrom that can result from being over-involved in someone else’s life. But, just the constant interaction with people and reading their many hurts and pains in the world have definitely affected me.





4) Friends – I have, interestingly enough, made some friends from blogging. Usually the friendships begin with me leaving a comment on someone else’s blog or vice versa. In my case, I always try to email back when I get a blog comment or Tweet them as a thank you for caring. In other cases, people comment back to me. If you have enough in common, you seem to develop an “email” relationship. I have met younger versions of myself, people that remind me of my kids and even a doppelganger on the web. It’s been great meeting people but, as I’ve been incredibly blessed with my marriage, my family and my economic situation, it’s difficult not to start feeling empathetic about some of these other people’s situation. It’s definitely making me want to get over-involved, which is often a huge problem for me. But, in spite of that, it’s been interesting to meet people from all over the United States as well as some international folks.





5) Education – it’s true. I’m actually a fairly educated person but I’ve really enjoyed reading about expatriates in other countries and how living abroad is so different than living in the US. Other countries attitudes towards Americans, while not surprising, can often be humbling to say the least. Beyond that, the attitude towards happiness and money is completely different in many parts of the world. There are also many situations in the US that I haven’t been familiar with so I’ve really learned a lot. Both about my country, myself and humanity.





6) Socioeconomic – this is going to sound terrible but I’m going to put it out there anyways. I didn’t go into blogging for the money. In fact, I don’t actually need money as the truth is that I’m quite comfortable financially. This is obviously not the case for many of the people out there and while I of course knew that, I rarely came into contact with so many people who were in financial straits. My kids attended private school, I live in a nice house, I have help keeping my nice house looking nice … obviously my life is fairly cushy. The people I hang out with are friends I met while my kids were younger, in preschool, school and various and sundry activities. Naturally, we are all in a similar socioeconomic group. So I’m jaded. I admit it. But the internet and blogging community is varied. People from all walks of life are there and many of the things I read are situations that I obviously never had to deal with. Do I buy food or gas? Do I enroll my kid in this or that? I need to homeschool because the school system is terrible and I have no other choices! There’s a medical condition my child has and I can’t afford the intervention. I’ve always given to charity and make it a point to help others but I suppose in many ways, I’ve let my money do the talking. I’ve spent lots of time thinking about this aspect of blogging and the effect it’s having on me.







7) Pain – I’ve talked a lot about depression, death, medical issues and the like. I’m pretty much of an open book and certainly, there’s very few things that I haven’t personally experienced. The fact is that there’s a lot of pain out there. People are hurting and scared. They feel isolated and alone. They have situations that overwhelm them. In some small way, I hope my admissions of things like depression, fear or even bulimia will make people realize that we’re all human and we all deal with these issues. I’ve never met ONE SINGLE PERSON in my entire life that doesn’t have something they need to deal with, even if they haven’t yet. So, I suppose that the knowledge of how extensive that pain is has surprised me.







So there you are. I started this journey towards a book with the end goal of being a “professional talk show guest.” Instead, I’m in the process of becoming a maudlin, wordy, self-involved human being who rambles on and on about the human condition. It’s been an intriguing journey thus far and I hope you continue with me as we go further. I like to think that I have an ability to observe the world and enlighten people in a humorous, yet somewhat unique manner but of course, you’d have to be the judge of that. I love talking, writing and thinking about this stuff and feel free to comment on this or any other blog post I might have. Thanks for accompanying me.

In which i discuss my mothering methods

I love my kids. I just want to go on record with that statement because I think since I make a lot of sarcastic posts about them, some people aren’t aware of how much I really love them. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that I don’t think that my girls aren’t bitches sometimes. They are. One of the things I miss about having a living parent is the ability to discuss my own personal history. When I think back on my childhood and especially my teenage years, I’m left with lots of unanswered questions. What was I like? How did my parents put up with me? What did they do when I was so obviously miserable and in pain? After all, watching your kid hurting is one of the most difficult things I have ever experienced. These are questions I have that I will never be able to properly answer. I can only surmise what they were thinking and therefore, try to adjust my parenting methods accordingly.




For example, when I was 19 I was miserable, angry and overweight. I had just finished my freshman year at Johns Hopkins University and had an apartment so I decided to live in Baltimore for the summer. The plan was to lifeguard with my best friend, who was also my roommate, and live in our brand new apartment. When I use the words “brand new,” I mean that it was brand new to us but it was actually one step removed from a slum. So we had planned on an amazing summer. I was really looking forward to it. Freshman year had been rough for me because I did terrible in school and my lifelong dream of being a doctor was looking bleak.



As summers went, this one was terrible. I lifeguarded at the club and the other lifeguards were okay but my manager was an incompetent asshole. I didn’t enjoy the job at all and my best friend somehow managed to work completely opposite hours than I did and we never saw each other. I was, in a word, miserable. So, I ate … and ate…and sulked…and ate some more. Of course, I gained a lot of weight and became even more miserable and eventually managed to get fired from my job for insulting the manager. (this is a common theme throughout my life but this was actually the FIRST time I got fired, but not the last). By the end of July, I was back home in North Carolina since I had no job in Baltimore anymore.



I was home for six weeks. I was horrible to be around and no doubt, terrible to my parents. In fact, my mother got such bad headaches that they did a CT Scan to see if she had a brain tumor. She didn’t. It was just the stress of having me around. I was such a pain in the ass that they thought my mom had a BRAIN TUMOR! My parents even took the entire family on a trip out West and I complained the entire way. Talk about being an ungrateful bitch! That was me.



So that’s the set up. When Keely was in first grade her teacher told me the following during a parent-teacher conference: “When kids are in school, they are on their best behavior so it’s not unusual for them to go home and act out. After all, if they can’t let their hair down there, where can they fall apart?” This statement has stuck with me for my entire life and I have found it incredibly useful as a parenting tool.



Kevin and I like to joke around about “public persona Keely.” This is the Keely MacDonald that’s the most incredible person I’ve ever met. She’s caring, funny, supportive and bright. She gives her friends pep talks. She compliments people. She is the glue that holds humanity together. We always say “do you think we’ll ever meet ‘public-persona Keely’ because she sounds delightful!” We felt, especially in her teenage years, that we got the sarcastic Keely, the stressed-out Keely, the mean and angry Keely. Kevin used to say to me, “I don’t know how you put up with her caustic remarks and mannerisms and the way she treats you.” I would respond by telling him my main parenting credo which was “IF my head isn’t killing me and I’m not going to get a CT Scan, then my girls couldn’t be as bad as I was. I gave my mom a ‘brain tumor’ so obviously, I’m better off than she was and I can put up with it”.



That’s how I always stayed calm. No matter what my kids were saying or doing. That rule has stood me in good stead. Now Keely, age 21, has worked through most of her teenage angst and while we still have our moments, she has emerged as one of the most delightful people I know. Andie reminds me of me. She can be moody, stubborn and mean but I know that she doesn’t mean it and that she both loves and needs me. After all, the flip side is that she is creative, funny, sarcastic and bright. We have some great times and Andie and I can really butt heads but I try not to take any of it personally. Having driven my own mom to a “brain tumor,” I just let their criticisms roll off my back.



Why am I writing about all this now? Since I’ve been “online” here in the blogging world I have started reading other blog posts. One such post was about an argument between two girls who were 9 and 11. The dialogue sounded so much like my girls that I was both mortified and amused. After all, my girls are 15 months apart and have such a love/hate symbiotic relationship that it’s created plenty of fireworks. At any rate, I commented to the “blogger” on Twitter that she was screwed and that those two girls were going to be major headaches and I used the hashtag on Twitter of #motheroftwobitches. This mother wasn’t pleased with the way I referred to my girls so I wanted to address that.



First of all, as someone with a bumper sticker that says “you say I’m a bitch like it’s a bad thing,” I don’t necessarily think being a “bitch” is so awful. Second of all, my girls can be both bitchy and bitches. That’s both a positive and a negative thing. Third of all, although I’ve only been on Twitter a few months, I have had a tendency to get in little Twitter wars with people. Sarcasm doesn’t come across very well in 140 characters. Sometimes, what I meant to allude to and what actually came out weren’t the same and the recipient of my Tweet has gotten offended. It’s a strange medium because there’s no place for subtlety or nuance in Twitter.



What’s my point? I think I lost it way back at the beginning of this entry. I suppose that my first point in that sometimes, you need to read between the lines to discover what a person really means. I also think that you can criticize and even make fun of your loved ones and still actually love them. There have been many times when I have “loved” my kids but not actually “liked” my kids. Fortunately, my kids have taken turns being the one I didn’t like so there was only one at a time. But back to my kids. Their hopes are my hopes. Their pain is my pain. Their successes are my successes. I suppose that my second point is that what you read on paper is only part of the story. My kids aren’t fully formed yet but I will say that honesty is the best parenting method out there. If my girls are bitches then hell yes I’m going to call them out on that. That doesn’t mean I don’t love them or even like them. I’m all for calling a spade a spade.



My kids are still works in progress and I won’t fully know for a long time, if ever, how I did as a parent. I will say that I wasn’t a perfect parent just as I’m not a perfect person. If my kids function in the world, can stand on their own and contribute to society in some small positive way, then I’ve done my job. And as to being the #motheroftwobitches, I love them and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

In which i discover that Keely is a Rodeo Clown

It was just a typical Saturday morning; Kevin and I got up, ate breakfast and then went and worked out. After we were finished, we went to our normal coffee spot and we were sitting outside on a balmy fall day enjoying a coffee, a scone and conversation. My cell phone rang and it was Keely calling from college.




Keely: “Mom, uggghhh, I feel terrible”



Me: “How was your dance last night?” (she had a sorority semi-formal the night before)



Keely: “I feel horrible, I’m hungover … and I think I broke my toe” (here we go!)



Me: “What? How did you do that?” (WHY? WHY do I ask these things?)



Keely: “I don’t know.”



Me: “You don’t know how you broke your toe? You must have been pretty anesthetized last night then. How bad is it?” (Anesthetized = shorthand for DRUNKER THAN HELL, but she’s 21 so …)



Keely: “Ugghh…it’s killing me, I can’t walk and it’s black and swollen. Plus I’m nauseous, and my head hurts and … hold on a minute Mom, Andie just got here. I’ll call you back”



I get off the phone and tell Kevin, “this is ridiculous.” Why is this ridiculous? First of all, Keely has broken her arm 8 times not counting the times she hurt it but it wasn’t broken. She’s also had 4 stress fractures, a few sprains and of course, the kicker is that last year she had “the biggest benign bone tumor in Duke University Medical Center history.” So yeah, that’s crazy! The second reason this is ridiculous is because just 5 weeks before I got a similar phone call from Andie saying:



Andie: “MOM!”



Me: “Andie, what are you doing calling me so early on a Saturday? Don’t you have tailgate?”



Andie: “Mom, I’m in so much pain…I’m dying”



Me: “Why, what happened?”



Andie: “I fell off the end of a truck at tailgate and I think I broke my arm.”



Me: “You FELL off a truck?”



Andie: “Yeah, at tailgate…I fell off the back of a truck!”



Me: “How bad is it?”



Andie: “It really hurts and it’s really swollen. I had to leave because the bass in the music was hurting my arm and I don’t know what to do.”



Me: (Huge sigh. This can’t be good if the BEAT is hurting her arm) “Can you take a picture with your phone and send it to me?”



Andie: “Yeah…hold on”



So, she takes the picture shown here:

And I look at it and I’m like “holy shit, that’s a mess” and I tell her to go to the emergency room. She tells me that there’s no way she’s going to the ER because it takes so long so I tell her to put it in a brace and drive home and I’ll call one of my MANY orthopedic friends on stand by to check her out. “I don’t have a brace” she says. “Really,” I reply, “then call Keely and see if she has a brace in her apartment.” (Of course she has a brace in her apartment. The kid’s had 8 broken arms! She collects them like people collect…what do people collect?) So, she comes home, we see somebody and YES, of course it’s broken. OF COURSE IT’S BROKEN!!! They put her in a brace (a different type of course so I have to purchase yet ANOTHER brace) with a thumb guard and tell her to get it re-checked in 3 weeks. (She doesn’t get it re-checked because well, she’s MUCH TO BUSY to bother with details like that. Let the arm rot and fall off and then call Mom and say “Mom my arm just fell off”). This was just FIVE weeks ago. She just took off her brace on Friday and this is now Saturday morning. Seriously? SERIOUSLY?



So yeah, I’m not particularly fazed but I’m in the “you must be fucking kidding me” part of the day. So Keely calls back.



Keely: “Mom, Andie’s here…my toe is killing me, my head is hurting and I’m nauseous.”



Me: “Put Andie on the phone.” (she does). “Andie, what does her toe look like?” (Andie’s pre-med, she needs to get used to this)



Andie: “It’s pretty swollen…and it’s black”



Me: “Ok. Take a picture with your cell phone and send it to me” (I’m still in the coffee place having my peaceful time with Kevin ruined once again by my kids. I mean really, I send them away to college and I still get this shit!)



Ok, I look at the picture here:

Yep, that looks pretty damn bad to me. You doubt me? I’m like an amateur doctor at this point in my life. Now I know that with a toe if it’s just broken, nothing much can be done but if the joints messed up, usually surgery is required so I tell them to stay put and call my orthopedic neighbor who is pretty goddamned sick of me calling his cell phone all the time. I explain the situation and after a huge sigh, he says to send him the picture. I forward the picture to him and he says to have her come home and get an X-Ray because it looks bad around the knuckle of the toe. (Wow! This is shocking! It looks bad? My kids? Jesus fucking Christ!)



I relay the information to the girls and Andie drives Keely home (we live an hour from their school) and I meet them at the orthopedic urgent care. The doctor tells me to have Andie’s arm X-Rayed as well to make sure it’s all the way healed since she removed the brace because, well because the brace was dirty and she was tired of wearing it. I mean, that’s as sound a medical reason as any, right?



So we’re at the Urgent Care place and they ask Keely how she hurt her toe. “Ummm…I don’t know” she replies. “Did you kick something, slam into something” the Physicians’ Assistant asks. At this point, I’m cracking up as Keely tries to hem and haw her way out of this. Finally, the PA says “Was alcohol involved?” Hahahaha…I’m cracking up and Keely replies sheepishly “Yes”.



Long story short, of course the toe is broken but fortunately, no surgery is needed so they put it in a boot. She needs to leave it on for 6 weeks! I have no idea how she’s going to get around campus but fortunately, after being on crutches for 6 months last year, this is nothing, and it’s kind of funny in a pretty sick way.



I take a picture of her foot in the boot (below)

and send out a Tweet that includes the picture and the following text: 8 broken arms, 4 stress fractures, 1 gigantic bone tumor and now this …



What do I get back? “Is this you over your lifetime, or your family?”

I Tweet back “One 21 year old child, all by herself”



Here’s the greatest Tweet ever from @hamletsmistress: “Is she a Rodeo Clown?” Here’s her link: Hamlets Mistress

HAHAHA. “Is she a Rodeo Clown?” We’re all cracking up in my house. I answer no, she’s not, but the Tweeter tells me that “You should tell people she’s a Rodeo Clown.” I can’t disagree with her. After all, it’s the only plausible explanation, isn’t it?



Any way, I just wanted to regale you with a typical day in the MacDonald household. They always start out with SO much promise but when one of your kids is a Rodeo Clown, things can go downhill rapidly.

In which i discuss committment

I was just finishing a Pilates class this morning when a woman I know in the class said “Lynn, I thought about you the other day.” “In what capacity?” I asked. “I was playing in a tennis match and I really, really didn’t want to be there and I thought, what would Lynn MacDonald do?” Of course, this was really funny to me so I asked, “what did you come up with?” She said, “I decided that you wouldn’t have even shown up there if you didn’t feel like playing so you wouldn’t be in the mood to quit. Is that true?”




Hmmm … I never really thought about it like that. It is true that I try to NEVER do anything that I don’t want to do, but it’s always a different situation when you have other people depending on you. I play in a weekly Mahjong game with my kind-of stepmom (long explanation required here) and her friends on Wednesday afternoons. I enjoy these women but our relationship is kind of funny. First of all they treat me like a kid (and I’m 51) because they’re all at least 70 and second of all, I’m a little impatient and make remarks like “I’m off to get an hourglass to get this thing moving along more rapidly” (that’s right, shockingly enough I’m impatient which ALWAYS leads to rudeness for me). So, occasionally I really don’t feel like playing. I do show up however, because I’ve made a commitment to them and if there’s one good thing about me (and trust me, there’s not that many good things about me) it’s that I’m loyal, I don’t lie, and I honor my commitments.



So back to the tennis game, if I bothered to show up I would finish the game out. I might not be happy about it and by the time we finished I’m sure that my brain would be imploding but I would definitely stay there. So that got me thinking about commitments.



When the kids were younger, I used to take on huge projects all the time. I think it was because chatting with pre-schoolers all day isn’t a lot of exercise on the brain but mainly, I just wanted to occasionally talk to adults about things that weren’t:



Other mom: “My kid just figured out the global health crisis today and he’s only two, how’s your kid?”



Me: “Oh, my kid just beat the shit out of somebody at pre-school today and got kicked out, thanks for asking.”



So, I began my volunteer career by being the volunteer chairperson of the pre-school. This didn’t involve much as I had a co-chair and she basically did all the work while I just cut up and misbehaved at the meetings. I really don’t understand why these people always put up with me. My glory days, however, began when I moved on to fundraisers. I loved working on fundraisers. At the beginning, I would run the entire fundraiser but I truly found my calling with the decorations. I loved doing decorations for these things. Once we did this Mardi Gras theme and I spent months building huge centerpieces in my house. I loved the process and never begrudged anything creative I had to do.



Since then, I have done the decorations for more parties than I can even imagine. I’ve even done decorations for friends’ parties and Bar Mitzvah’s. I love the creative process involved in these things. But, I’ve never gone professional because if you just take it job by job, you always have the ability to quit whenever you want. It seems to be the story of my life. Get pretty good at something and then quit. Not for nothing do I call myself an underachiever.



When my kids moved on to primary school, I was asked to work on a haunted house. Of course I had a co-chair and while she did ALL the work, I spent months - and I mean months - building a 7-foot model of the creature from “Aliens” in my garage. This thing was huge and was run by a computer so that it rose up and then crouched back down. I also made “steaming” pods using dry ice for the “fake” steam. The entire contraption was amazing. Kevin couldn’t pull into the garage for about 3 months because I built the thing in his parking space. I had a blast building it and one of my favorite things to do was to run up to Lowe’s and say to the guys there “so I’m building this Alien and I need some material that can help make it look like so and so.” Their reaction was priceless.



But I digress. The point I was making was that if I do take on a commitment, I usually follow through but I learned long ago not to take on the type of activity that I don’t enjoy. About 4 years ago, The United Way asked me to be on a huge committee for them to discuss an umbrella organization for the many groups that help underprivileged and underserved people in the Greater Greensboro Area. I served on this committee for about 3 years and it was incredibly frustrating to me. I didn’t feel like I was serving a huge purpose as I wasn’t a “professional” in any of the necessary areas. I couldn’t believe how slow the process was because of all the “fiefdoms” that the individual groups had and the vast amount of in-fighting that abounded as a result. I was incredibly bored with all the yapping. So after 3 years, I quit the committee. I feel mildly bad about it because I don’t usually quit such things but the lack of forward progress was driving me nuts. I’m not a very patient person as exhibited by how much I bitch about this blog and it’s lack of readership.



So. Commitment. When I commit, which I rarely do, I stick it out. So if you’re asking yourself, “what would Lynn MacDonald do?” Pretty much, whatever the hell she wants. Thanks for asking.