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I have this poster, from Sid Cahuenga's at Disney's Hollywood Studios...

Those who know me offline know I am rather obsessed with Alice in Wonderland. If I could, my entire house, or at the very least a room, would be themed to Alice in Wonderland. Shockingly, I was never TOO into the Disney animated film when I was little – it just always seemed too long. But as I got older, I grew to love Disney’s Cheshire cat and Alice herself. Tom Petty’s Don’t Come Around Here No More video is still one of my favorites. In college I may have owned a tie-dyed t-shirt featuring the iconic caterpillar, but I don’t think I was wearing if for the same reason everyone else was. {I did go through an innocent phase of tie-dyed shirt-crystal-necklace wearing in college…Stacy and Clinton would’ve had a field day with me. Ok, they probably still would. But I digress…}

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I’ve mentioned before that I was spoiled as a child. I remember once, a two of my friends told me I was spoiled and I had to ask my mom what it meant. She said it meant I was really loved. Now obviously that could be misinterpreted to lead my friends to think they weren’t loved, but we all seemed to turn out okay. Really, as a child I don’t recall being obnoxiously spoiled. I mean – I never had an Easy Bake Oven OR a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine, so seriously, how bad could it have been? I actually think the conversation with my friends came from my announcing our first trip to Walt Disney World. I suppose, in the world of a small bedroom community in New England, announcing a 2-week trip to Walt Disney World where we would stay in the Lake Buena Vista Vacation Villas was something to be envied.

Anyway, that is not the point of this post. I wanted to talk a bit about my parents, and how I was raised. Of course, my reflections and memories of my childhood are just that, MY memories, and my mom may have a completely different account as to how things happened. These are the things that stuck with me and formed me into the kind of parent I am today – some as a direct result of what I rebelled against as a child, others because I appreciated the lessons I learned from my parents.

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Of COURSE we wanted to make a cheerleading pyramid at the party. Why wouldn't we??

Continue to the Not-So-Wordless Wednesday

This is part 1 in the All About Me series for NaBloWriMo that I’m taking part in for February.

So I figured what better place to start than the beginning right? My parents met in Boston, when my dad was working in the same restaurant as my mom’s ex-husband – my siblings dad. Her ex-husband was working there on the side, his actual career was that of a high school English teacher. My dad had moved up from waiter to Maitre D’ of this particular place, The Cafe Budapest. This was a 5-star Hungarian restaurant run by a feisty woman named Edith Ban, a Holocaust survivor with her concentration camp number tattooed on her arm, a flair for business and wearing beautiful white dresses. The restaurant was famous for its cuisine as well as its color-themed rooms and was featured briefly in the movie The Housesitter.

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Those of you who have been online for a while have probably heard of NaNoWriMo before – National Novel Writing Month. The goal there is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I tried it once about 4 or 5 years ago, and didn’t get much past a first chapter. Blogging is a little less daunting, so with a reminder from a friend’s blog, I thought I’d sign up and give NaBloPoMo a try.

Since I can’t ever make things easy, I thought I’d go a step further and make all posts related to this month about me. Yes. Me. Of course I’ve blabbed about myself before, usually in relation to Disney and my memories there, but I thought I’d use this slightly shortened month to talk about myself, either in-depth or just some fluff pieces. A lot of times you stumble across a blog or a person online and you think you know them based on their likes, their recent entries or their tweets. Sometimes what’s visible is only the tip of the iceberg that is the person behind a blog. The way I relate best to people is based on common background or interests. I know I instantly feel a kinship with someone if they say “I love David Bowie!” or “That was my favorite toy as a child!”. Why not expand on that and see just how much we all have in common?

So welcome aboard and stay tuned for some fun (and hopefully interesting) posts all about me. There will probably be additional non-me-related posts this month as well, but I’ll try to do 28 NaBloPoMo posts on their own.  That said – any questions or topic ideas about me you’d like me to touch on? I’m all ears (or eyes really).

11 years ago, I wasn’t exactly partying like it was 1999. I had high blood pressure, swollen ankles and was pretty much done with being pregnant. It had been a rocky start due to severe morning sickness that left me unable to even keep water down. Typical first-time mom-to-be worries kept me on edge most of the pregnancy and after being told it was a girl for almost 5 months only to discover in the ultrasound it was a boy, I was always expecting the unexpected. So perhaps I should’ve known in the morning when I went in for my 37 week check up on that last Friday in January, that I’d be admitted to the hospital by that night.

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I’m in the process right now of filling out my FAFSA form for 2010 and beginning the process of going back to school to complete my degree. Those who’ve known me for the past 10 years or so know this has always been a big goal for me.

To make a very long story short not as long, when I was actually IN college back in the 1990’s, I’m not really sure what happened. I loved high school so much and I did well. I was in all honors and AP classes and graduated with honors. However, I soon discovered that being in a small, close-knit Catholic high school was quite different from heading off to an enormous college in downtown Boston. I loved my classes, but being a commuter, I sort of floundered socially. It was much easier to find an excuse why I couldn’t make it in to classes than to suck it up and head in town. I thought maybe the school was the issue, and transferred to…an even bigger school in another part of Boston. I’m not sure why I thought that’d solve my problem. Again, loved my classes…that’s where I majored in Creative Writing for Children and later Public Relations…but again, I just felt lost.

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Surely we all remember that beloved children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon, right? That Harold was every child’s hero with his ability to create a wonderful world of purple from a single crayon. He was also every parent’s nightmare. Purple crayon?! Just where is he drawing this world? As a parent you have to ask – what was that author thinking?! Of course, I’m just kidding, the book is a wonderful reminder of just how vast a child’s imagination is and the wonders it can create. But I recently had my own experience with a purple crayon that made me look at it in a completely different light.

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I can’t tell you the number of old diaries I have from my adolescent years, teens, and twenties which were once brand new Christmas presents. Oh, I had such good intentions. I would record my innermost thoughts, wishes and goals and motivate myself to achieve what I knew I could. If you look through those old diaries, you’ll most likely lists of resolutions on the first few pages. The first one was the same each year: Lose Weight. I’d be so excited by the prospect of the new year and all it would bring, I usually went through the year writing down the number of pounds I thought I could lose by each date and marking my ‘goal weight’ date with stars and exclamation points. It seemed so tangible then, that in just a few weeks or months, I could be where I wanted to be.

Then, the real world kicked in. My diary stayed hidden in a drawer or under my bed and I had no reminder of the goals I hoped to reach. Temptation was all too easy to succumb to. The days turned into weeks and months and those goals faded into history. Every year it was the same. Add that to my list of ‘must do’s’ that don’t get done. It came to a point where I stopped getting those diaries to write in, because it was known I didn’t bother keeping up. It also came to a point where I just stopped making resolutions because I knew I’d forget about them so quickly. Why bother with the game? Continue Reading New Year, New Me