Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

The Word on the Street

by

crazy-faceToday I overheard a man on his cell phone, asking his friend if he had “arterial” motives. Maybe his friend was a little too concerned about his own cardiovascular health.

Laylee says her stuffed bear Eddie is starting preschool next week. I asked if he was excited and she said “I don’t think he even knows. He probably forgot. He’s really forgettable.” Laylee is not.

Magoo has started referring to himself in the 3rd person… as a crazy-face2T-Rex… but sometimes he forgets. Today he forgot his identity for a moment. “Mommy. Can Buddy play with… Um… um… [lowering his voice an octave]… Can the BIG T-REX play with your ball?”

After the tenth time watching and rewatching this video clip of my infant nephew, Laylee looked up at me skeptically and said, “Mom. I can’t understand a WORD he’s saying!” With her tone of voice she was clearly calling him some sort of incommunicative idiot-tard. He may be cute, but that kid is not gonna get along very well in life until he learns to speak so people can understand him.

Consumer Motivation

by

I bought these because they are unsulphured and unsweetened.

for the purity

I bought these because they are made from BLUE CORN, which is corn that is BLUE. The chips may not be a whole food, but they only have 3 ingredients and I can count that high.

for the color

I bought this because a little good sharp cheddar goes a long way which is good for my waistline.

for the yum

I bought these because while I was pausing to see why they were selling “minions” from the refrigerator case at Trader Joes, Magoo leaned over the edge and spit all over them.

for the loogey

They say that “if you break it you buy it.” I think that if you hock a loogey all over a piece of meat, the same rule applies.

Smirk Rehab

by

Someone recently told me that my face at rest looks a little angry, mean or possibly snarkish. Since I rarely see my face when it’s truly at rest, I had no idea that I was possibly sending people a rageful vibe.

This has troubled me and I’ve begun practicing my neutral face. I want to look happy but I don’t want to sit around with a goofy grin on my face, my eyes popping open with inexplicable joy at the thought of the traffic I’m sitting in or the produce I’m squeezing.

I also don’t want to be one of those people who walks around with a secret smirk on their face, a look says, “Sh-yeah. I am so much cooler than you. You don’t even know that your fly is undone.” Do you know those people, people who make you self-conscious by the simple fact that they always seem to by laughing on the inside, not in a nice way?*

So, I’m trying to cultivate a look of friendly, happy, effortless contentment. It sounds easy, but oh no it is not.

I want to keep my mouth closed to avoid what my dad refers to as “looking like an idiot” and I want the corners of my lips to turn up ever so slightly but not enough to make me look demented or promote wrinkles or other facial decay.

I spent 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer at the gym today sweating away my troubles and trying out various relaxed facial expressions in the equipment video screen which is quite reflective and conveniently placed.

I’ll tell you, I’m not making a lot of progress in this mission. I end up looking like someone who’s trying to look relaxed, friendly and effortlessly at peace while bouncing up and down with a heart rate of 160. It’s very strange and when I’m practicing facial expressions, I always end up doing the fake laugh like I’ve just thought of something mildly hilarious from earlier in the day. One corner of my mouth twitches to the side, I wrinkle my nose and make a mild “hmph” sound while nodding my head ever-so-slightly. Trust me — I look really cool and nonchalant while I do that.

In the end I decided that perhaps I should work on learning to make a face that does not inform everyone that on my MP3 player I’m listening to Vanilla Ice, Paula Abdul and Shakira in Spanish (which I don’t understand) and I’m grooving so hard on the inside that it would be embarrassing to the other gym patrons if they knew what was happening inside my head.

Hola Isabel! I feel you dawg. Move to my town. Iron something on for me!

Poser in Granolaville

by

Last November around Thanksgiving I found myself in the Whole Body section of Whole Foods, wearing a beret I had crocheted by hand. The hat was supposed to be a present for my little sister for Christmas but it wasn’t Christmas yet and I thought I’d test it for fiber-poisoning, while covering my greasy unshowered hair. Who has time to shower when family’s in town? I also wanted to appear earthy while shopping at Whole Foods, like I’m not one to waste water… or soap.

“Now why was Kathryn in Whole Foods?” you might ask. If you guessed it had something to do with my good friend the homeopath, then you were correct. If you guessed it was because I like paying 10 dollars for a single apple, you were false or incorrect or something.

When I’m in there, I feel like a bit of a poser in Granolaville, like someone is going to stop me in the isle, point a judgmental finger and yell out, “THIS WOMAN EATS AT MCDONALDS. SHE SMELLS LIKE NON-ORGANIC BANANAS. STONE HER WITH HER OWN GRASS-FED GOAT CHEESE CURDS!”

I do occasionally eat fast food and sugar (referred to as The White Death by my naturopath) and food that has been processed by someone other than myself. I don’t recycle EVERYTHING and at least half of the lights in my house are not fluorescent energy star bulbs. I do not turn off the water while I’m lathering in the shower. My kids think Nuggets are a food group. I wear yoga pants but I’ve never actually done yoga. Raw milk scares me. I don’t weave my own cloth to make diapers. Sometimes I shop at the mall.

For these and other reasons, I’ve always felt like a bit of an imposter when I’m shopping at Whole Foods.

But lately I’m getting more comfortable there. I’ve been cooking more healthful whole foods, items that I can picture living and growing in nature. Who’s ever heard of a Dorito tree or a free range Slim Jim? I’m trying to think about the food I’m eating, where it comes from and what’s in it.

My neighbor’s been a huge influence on me. Because I respect her so much, I’ve opened myself up to thinking more about the choices I make every day and I’ve started to realize that I’m putting things into my body that do nothing to help it and can even be harming me and my family.

We’ve also been seeing a naturopath and after 12 rounds of antibiotics for Laylee for previous ear infections, we were finally able to manage one without drugs. We did it with herbs, dietary changes and home remedies and she got better quickly.

I didn’t set out to be some kind of raging homeopath or all natural woman wandering through Whole Foods dressed in a hemp muumuu but things are just starting to make sense and I love feeling like I have a little more of an active role in my family’s health.

My current goal is to find ways to feed us well without breaking the bank. We’ve found a lot of great deals on whole organic foods at Costco and the bulk and health food sections of our local grocery store and I hope to join a local farm co-op this summer. I’d appreciate any tips you have to offer. Organic is not the most important thing to me and it’s honestly not financially realistic for our family but as we incorporate more whole grains, fruits and vegetables our health is improving.

I also believe that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Every good choice we make benefits us and we just keep learning more and doing better. That alone should qualify me to walk into any grocery store with my head held high. I may have stopped at McDonald’s for lunch on my way to Whole Foods but dadgumit, I ate peaches and millet for breakfast.

Somebody Moved the X

by

My brain is singing today. It is filled with the joy that is sunshine in the middle of a Seattle winter. It is dancing and tripping and gurgling in the spittle of its own giddy Vitamin-D-overdosed hysteria. Did you ever see the SUN?! I did. Today in fact.

The light next to my bed is set on a timer to turn on and flood my face with light half an hour before my alarm goes off. My shrinker thought it would be a good idea to remind my brain what light looks like and simulate sunrise and something about moods and SAD-ness since the sun is not seen to rise in the Puget Sound area for several months each year.

My naturopath took out around ¾ of my blood last week and tested it for several things like vitamins, minerals, chemicals and cutenesses. Despite being ridiculously adorable, my blood is very low in Vitamin D and he suggested I come by his office and pick up a supplement today. I bailed. We were having too much fun in the sun, soaking up D the good old-fashioned way and eating sand because I think my blood is also low in sand. Well, not anymore.

We headed to the park where we met up with some friends. The kids bounced around like air molecules in a 7th grade science animation, smashing into each other and leaving socks, shoes and grapes scattered for acres. Laylee and Magoo took turns playing in the sand volleyball pit and the children’s play area which are located on opposite sides of the park, careful to avoid ever both being in my sightline at the same time.

I stood between them like an oscillating sprinkler, swiveling from one side to the other as I chatted with other oscillating moms, rarely making eye contact but hardly pausing for a breath as we gabbed away. And the sun was beautiful.

I didn't know that rule!

At some point Laylee’s friend Missy asked for her sunglasses back. She had leant them to Laylee who wore them around like a be-pony-tailed rock star for approximately 10 seconds before digging a hole from the sand volleyball pit to the center of the earth and dropping them in. She then filled in the hole and patted it down.

When we asked her to dig them up again, she began a frantic search which was honestly more “frantic” than it was a “search.” Eve explained that glasses should probably never be buried in the sand because it could scratch them and because they could possibly be lost forever.

Laylee was concerned. She said she didn’t know the rule about glasses and sand before but now she did and she wouldn’t bury them ever again. Her main problem in retrieving them was that “somebody moved the X.”

Apparently she had placed a small X made out of grass or debris or microscopic pollen flecks and someone had come along and accidentally moved it. We spent the next several minutes doing our best Stanley Yelnats impression before Eve told us not to worry about it.

So instead we turned our attention to Magoo. He’s much bigger than sunglasses and he moves around a bit more but we still made sure to mark him with an immoveable X, just in case the sunshine made us forgetful.

mark him with an X

Searching

by

He falls asleep cupping my cheek with his pudgy little hand, tiny contented snores escaping his nose, his lips fluttering and sucking in search of his long lost friends, my breasts.

Calmed by his warmth, I think about my latest round of parental introspection, my quest for maternal perfection.

I have no better chance of becoming a perfect parent in this life than I do of becoming a perfect human being. Motherhood is who I am, not some hobby I picked up to master and then move on from. I need to learn to somehow be happy with myself without settling or stopping my progress.

Is it possible to be comfortable in your own skin while still holding out hope for the ideal?