Love This Planet

It’s that time of year again, when the Bloggy Giveaways are flying fast and furious.  I can’t resist taking part and joining in the fun.  And with the launch of my baby, 5 Minutes for Going Green, I figured how better to celebrate than to giveaway some of my favorite reusable bags?

Get Hip Get Green has some of my favorite reusables, because their sleek and boxy design means they are light weight and hold a ton.  They have a few different designs, and I’m giving away a set of FIVE in the design of your choice.  Cool, eh?

All you have to do is leave a comment here telling me which post from 5 Minutes for Going Green was your favorite in the last week.  You can earn an extra entry by twittering or posting about this giveaway, just leave an additional comment with a link to your tweet/post (also send me a tweet at @ToThink to let me know you did!). The deadline is midnight on Friday August 1st.  Winner will be picked at random.  Good luck!  And be sure to check out the plethora of other giveaways going on this week!

Weekly Twitterings: My Favorite Tweets

If you are a new reader, and don’t follow me on Twitter, you may not know that I’m not always gloom and doom.  I think my lighter side comes out more effortlessly in tiny bursts, which is one reason I love Tweeting.  I decided to keep track of my favorite tweets for posterity, and of course just KNEW you’d want me to share them here. I know, how did you live without this until now?

Here’s the first installment of this week’s Weekly Twitterings:

Like this post?  Subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on Twitter.

Weathering The Storm

This morning I woke up with a start.  My heart racing, I immediately tried to get BACK to sleep to finish the dream I had been having.  To try to give it a happy ending.  I got halfway there, giving myself a little relief, but then got out of bed to calm down, to stop shaking, and to go hug my family.

The dream that I had was that the world, literally, was closing in on me.  I was in some sort of building, and the walls were leaning inward, and out the window I could see only dirt.  The Earth was swallowing us up.  Windows were cracking, and we were all (my husband, children, and random other people I didn’t know) running around this building trying to figure out how to save ourselves.  Have you ever literally ran for your life?

I had the feeling that I had been holding up the walls, but it was too much for me to do alone.  And no one would help me.  I remember feeling abandoned.  Finally, I abandoned the wall, and was running around trying to find my children.  Hysterically I called their names, seeing them way up ahead and unable to reach them. That part was the worst.

At some point I had the sense that they were lost, and I needed to just hope someone had grabbed them and go for cover.  There was an ambulance in the building (this part is really random, so just go with it), and a bunch of us decided that it was made of steel and was our best chance of survival.  I jumped into the ambulance with no where else to go.  Inside the ambulance I found two of my three boys, huddled and sobbing.  I ran to them.

And this is the part where I woke up for just a moment.  Unable to breathe.  Feeling the weight of the whole world literally on my chest.  This is also when I tried to go back to sleep to give the dream a “happy” ending, and after I slightly drifted off, my husband came running into the ambulance with our baby in arms as another man slammed the ambulance door and sealed it shut.  We heard loud noises of metal and concrete crushing and bending, everyone was screaming.

And then I really woke up.

As I told my husband about this dream, we shrugged our shoulders and agreed that it doesn’t take a lot of dream analysis to figure this one out.  We DO feel like the world is crashing in on us lately.  We DO feel abandoned.  We DO feel powerless.

Most of the time when I have these crazy vivid dreams, I try to figure out the lesson.  I feel like my dreams have meaning, and it might not always be possible to figure out that meaning, but I like to try.

This dream seemed more of a way to visualize how my heart feels, than a lesson in how to handle it.  I know the ways I can handle it, but I don’t feel strong enough to do it.  Everything is in chaos.

I know that we will get through this, and maybe that was the lesson.  That even though things could not seem more dire, there is always a respite.  Always a place to go for safety.  A place to weather the storm.

If you need me, that’s where I’ll be.

Not So Welcome Home

On Sunday when I finally arrived home in the wee hours of the night, I couldn’t wait to sit on my couch and breathe.  My husband was up waiting for me, and as fun and productive as Blogher ‘08 was, I missed my family something fierce.  I know most everyone missed their kids, and missing my baby in particular was like missing a limb.  I didn’t feel right or whole while away, even if the break from the daily grind was really nice.

So the first time my baby woke up for his bottle that night, I couldn’t wait to go to him and comfort him and say “mama’s home!”.  I imagined he would be giddy with laughter and want to snuggle, and might even have a hard time going back to sleep because he was so happy to see me.

And then reality hit.

When I went in, my baby saw me and started crying.  I figured it was just him missing me, and he was crying for ME.  But as I held him, tried to give him the bottle, tried to comfort him, the crying turned into a full blown meltdown.  He was enraged, and was flinging himself away from me, trying desperately to escape the clutches of me.  His mother.  He wasn’t just acting like he was mad, or like he didn’t know me, he was acting completely different.  Completely not normal.

Finally my husband came into the room, took the baby and I watched as he completely calmed down in my husbands arms.  Like, immediately.  And then he went right back to sleep.

I walked out of the room and broke down.  It was hard being away from my kids, even if it had been totally worth it and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.  There are also other circumstances going on here at home that are “shaping my character”, not the least of which is extreme financial stress.  So it felt like the whole cumulation of emotions, and my baby rejecting me, came down on me all at once.  It all came pouring out.

I know that sometimes kids act like they are mad at a parent when the parent comes back from being out of town.  I know that sometimes a baby can act standoff-ish, too.  But the way my little guy reacted seemed to remind me, or REINFORCE, that he is autistic.  That, no, it wasn’t all a bad dream when he regressed and we found out he had autism.  It reinforced that he is not normal, and no, he didn’t get better while you were gone, and this isn’t going away.

And I know that might sound silly to say, especially since my two other boys have autism and I should be used to this by now.  And it also might sound weird, since I certainly didn’t expect to come home to a miraculous healing and have my littlest one all better.

But accepting that he is on the spectrum is still a process for me.  I DO still wake up and hope it was all a bad dream.  That this precious little face will start looking at me in the eye again.  That he will start sleeping again, talking again.  I miss him, and I realized that while I was away, I was missing the old him.  The REAL him.  The person that I know is still inside there, but I can’t reach, and who can’t reach me.

So now, a few days later, he seems to be back to accepting me and letting me love on him.  He knows me again, and wants to play and giggle together.  And I continue on my quest to find him and reach him, each and every day.

Even My Eyelashes Are Tired

I made it home in one piece, back from the whirlwind weekend at Blogher, exhausted, achy and missing my boys something mad.  I can’t find adequate words to convey my exhaustion, but I also can’t find words to convey my utter joy at how great this trip was.  My partner in crime was good about blogging and telling you all the fabulous details of things we did, so be sure to read her post for all the dish.  I will have tons and tons of pics up on Flickr just as soon as I remember how to move my legs.

I met so many amazing and beautiful and smart people, I can’t say enough to do them all justice.  The Kirtsy chicks are my kind of peeps, Rocks In My Dryer is every bit as charming as you think, I want to put Savvy Auntie in my pocket she’s so tiny and gorgeous, and it was fun to see Dooce wearing purple tights (or panty hose, if you want to get technical).

Smart women make me feel alive.  I love their energy, excitement and commitment to being kind.  The sessions were interesting and the networking was off the charts fabulous.  I will be going through my mountain of biz cards I collected and slowly but surely emailing them all to tell them of their fabulousness.

I’m excited to start the next chapter of this summer, the year, and my life.  What lies around the next corner?  I can’t wait to find out.

Watching The Sun

I will be watching the sun rise tomorrow from the window of a chartered bus, on my way to O’Hare airport to fly to San Francisco.  What adventure lies ahead, only God knows, but my travel buddy and I are ready for the challenge.  We have some loose plans, but we want it to be a weekend of relaxation, friends and the business of blogging.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter, where I’m sure I’ll be goofing off and giving you the inside dish on what Blogher is really all about.

P.S.  I haven’t started packing yet.

Spin Me Right Round, Right Round

Today I’m running around like a crazy person, trying to dot my i’s and cross my t’s and cover all my bases, in preparation for traveling to Blogher ‘08.  Having special needs kids mean that I don’t go out of town hardly ever, and when I do it’s as complex as NASA’s checklist for shuttle take-off.  And right now we are definitely not go for launch.

So as I make my lists and print documents and gather business cards and try to find cold weather clothes for San Francisco in the summer, I imagine how in just a few days that I will be seeing many of you in person.  And those of you who I will not be seeing, I hope you will check in here as I blog straight from the conference, post pictures and share crazy tales.

Thanks again to HP and MoFuse for sending me to Blogher, and don’t forget to enter my Wii giveaway that ends tomorrow night!

The Stay At Home Mom-Worker

Through my years of being a mom (my eldest is almost 6 now) my role has continued to evolve and change along with me.  When I was in college, I had a difficult time picking a major, because all I wanted to do or be in life (as far as career ambitions go) was a mother.  I felt like I was made for the job, and couldn’t wait to begin my new “career”.

Once I was pregnant with my first baby, I did constant research.  What kind of birth would we have?  What kind of parents would we be like?  Would I let him wear little sailor outfits?  All of it was extremely important to me.

My husband and I had planned on me being a stay-at-home-mom, so the job I had longed for was finally going to begin.  I was ecstatic.

And then I had that first baby.  He was more wonderful and more difficult than I had ever prepared for.  He was one of a kind, and he took my perfect little Rule Book to be a Perfect Mom I had created for myself, and promptly threw it out the window.  Hard.

So my role as a stay-at-home-mom slowly, but surely, turned into a stay-at-home-mom-therapist-psychologist-dietitian-advocate.  Autism became a member of the family, and no matter how unwelcome, we had to accept it’s presence in our lives.

I embraced these new roles most days, however on the other days I questioned my own qualifications.  How did I know what I was doing?  Why didn’t I feel like I was doing a better job?  It was all I could do to just accept what is, and what may not ever be, and move forward.

So fast-forward several years, and you have present day.  My role has been evolving yet again, and while it’s all for the good, it’s still unexpected and intriguing.  I have expanded my role to being a stay-at-home-mom-therapist-psychologist-dietitian-advocate-writer-blogger-work-at-home-mom.  I would love to add gardener, baker and urban homesteader to that list, but for now those have to wait.

We all know that most people consider stay-at-home-moms (SAHMs) to be in a different category as work-at-home-moms.  We SAHMs often pick up plenty of odd jobs, in addition to our every day battles with the “insurgents” at home, but yet no one changes my category on all those surveys I’m sent.  And for me personally, with my many deadlines and writing projects I have spinning, I am still considered a SAHM by most accounts.  This is just not accurate anymore, and  I don’t think I can say “Work-At-Home-Mom”, because it typically is referring to moms who are in the general (i.e. corporate) work force, but telecommute from home.

So what’s my category on such a survey?  Mom At Home That Works But Is Never Really “Staying” Anywhere?  A Stay At Home Mom Who Is Only Home When She’s Working?  What do you think?

I’m a little partial to Stay At Home Mom-Worker. Because I am “at home”, I’m a mom, and I’m most definitely working.  Come to think of it, we are all, ALL those things.  Ah, labels.  Aren’t they fun?

Big Pimpin

Fast and furious is how I would describe my life lately.  Barely letting my head hit the pillow at night, I’m working working and oh yeah, working.  I’m not complaining, because I’m choosing to do all that I am doing.  I like it, I’m passionate about it, and I don’t want to be doing anything else.

However, this–all this (picture me waving my hands around gesturing at all the places I write and work, there on your right)–is way more than just a blog.  Or just a diary of my thoughts.  Yes, it happens to be a blog and yes it does include my thoughts, but it’s also my brand.  My product–or, my business.  I do this as a career, and like any smart business person–I promote my product.  Why wouldn’t I?  It would be silly for me to work hard on all these things and then keep them a secret from you all.

Yesterday I received an email saying “all you do anymore is self-promotion, I’m tired of coming to your blog and being told to click somewhere else“.  I won’t lie–that sentiment took a little bit of the wind out of my sails.  For about 2 seconds I thought, “oh great, tomorrow I’m linking to a post I wrote at BlahBlah’s website, I guess that’s more self-promotion!.”

But then I realized, of COURSE it’s ok to link to my work.  Why would I want to keep my writing a secret from all of you?  That wouldn’t be fair to you and it would be just plain dumb on my part.  I know when I have people whom I enjoy reading, I am GLAD to find more places I can read their writing.  I can’t get enough.  My secret hope is that you all feel that way about me, too.  Or if you don’t, that’s ok (well it’s not ok, tell me how I can win you over), and I will move on.  But to tell me that I should not be promoting my product?  If an artist completed a collection and was having a showing at a gallery, would he be accused of shameless self-promotion if he told people about it?  When bands go on concert tours, is it simply shameless self-promotion, or are they promoting their product and giving their audience what it wants?

I love what I do, and want to be successful, and even though I don’t think I’m “selling out” (another part of that email in question) by working with companies and PR people, I know that there is a fine line.  Writers, and any artists for that matter, have a job that is intimately tied to their person.  My work is my heart and soul, and I do need to protect it.  I only associate myself with companies and brands that I believe in, and whose ethics are in line with me.  I would never represent anyone just for exposure or just for a buck.  However, dismissing any and all of that less than glamorous part of writing, simply because of a desire for “free and pure” content, is misguided at best.

In the end, I know that part of who I am is a “to each his own” free thinker, so I know that I’m not going to harbor these feelings too long today.  There’s mouths to feed, laundry to be folded, writing to be published and sponsors to correspond with.  So I leave you with this link, to my new baby that I’m so very proud of, and I hope that you’ll keep coming back for more of this crazy blawg, and ride this wave as long as we can, together.

5 Minutes for Going Green Is Born!

If you thought I was a busy bee before, hang on to your hat.  It’s getting a whole lot busier, and a whole lot greener up in herrr.

I am the Managing Editor of the shiny and new site called 5 Minutes for Going Green.  It’s a new sister site of 5 Minutes for Mom, and I’m over the moon about this new baby of ours.  We have a team of amazing writers on deck to bring you stories, tips, hilarity and more.  I know you will absolutely LOVE it, and we need your help in spreading the word!  So come on over, add us to your reader, post about it, tweet about it, tell your friends go crazy!

And while you’re at it, don’t stop there.  Check out the other fabulous sister sites that were also born today.  It’s a whole family of hip and smart women, that I know you will adore.

Big hug and smooches to Janice and Susan from 5 Minutes for Mom for bringing me on board and making all our dreams a reality!