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In the world of the internet, topics run in cycles. One week, everyone and their brother is writing about bullying, the next week it's gun control, then it's breastfeeding or yoga pant controversies. Right now, it seems that there are more stories about marriage being posted and spread around like wildfire.

I read most of them and shake my head.

I have actually laughed out loud at a few of them, particularly the ones written by newly married people who claim to have it all figured out.

I've been married over fifteen years now,  and have been with my husband for six additional ones before then. Even with all of that, I would never attempt to tell you that I have it figured out.


Here's what I have learned about marriage, most of it the hard way.

- You have to be flexible. Marriage is like any kind of relationship between two people in many ways. To be sustainable, you have to be flexible. Sometimes you need more, sometimes you give more, sometimes you take more, sometimes you are forced to do more. It's hardly ever equal in terms of the amount of effort expended or needed because life is never predictable. Get used to it. Over the long term, it should roughly balance out so that one person isn't always the giver, the other the taker. There has to be some balance, but it's really only possible in the long term. On any given day, the scale is probably going to be tipped one direction or the other. This is part of life. Get used to it.

- You can't keep score. If you've been giving more lately, it's probably because your partner needs more, not because they are just a selfish asshole. (unless, of course, they are a selfish asshole, which I will address later in this post) If you're worried about tallying up what you give, if you're keeping a mental tab open and waiting to cash it in, if you're building resentment against your partner, it's fairly safe to say that you aren't ever going to feel validated. Are you doing things for your spouse because you want cosmic credit for it, or are you doing them because you are supporting your partner? Ask yourself that question before you get pissed off at them.

- Be clear about your expectations. No one is a mind reader, and passive aggression is a tool for manipulating people, not a component of a healthy marriage. Whatever it is that you want or need, say it. Deliberately. Don't hint at it. Don't silently hope they'll figure it out. Don't beat around the bush. If you don't tell someone what you want or need, you don't get to be frustrated when they fail. It's not fair.

- Marriage isn't about you or them. It's about both of you AND this thing you have between you. It isn't about what you want or need all the time, just like it can't always be about the other person, and it can never just be about the marriage because that ignores the truth that a marriage is a legal construct between two people. Once you have kids, it's about them too. There is give and take in any relationship, there are compromises and sacrifices that need to be made for the benefit of the marriage or family unit. Everyone has to be willing to make those sacrifices. If there is a breakdown in communication, if one person suppresses issues, it will eventually effect everyone. For a marriage to survive, you have to be willing to think about the consequences of your choices, not just for you, but for them, and you must be willing to alter your behavior accordingly. You are different people with different philosophies, different approaches, different goals...they will not match up all the time.

- Fight fair. That not keeping score thing comes in here too. You will have disagreements. There will be conflicts. If you drag every shitty thing they have ever done from out of the closet, you're not fighting fair. If you drag other people (usually their immediate family) into it, you're not fighting fair. If you aren't being honest about what is really bothering you, you aren't fighting fair.

- Listen. I cannot stress this one enough. Put the phone down. Get off the computer. Turn off the television. Remove all the other distractions from your life and just listen to your spouse.  Hearing what someone is saying is not always the same as listening.

- Respect your individuality. If he likes to fish and you can't stomach the thought, tell him to go with a buddy or a brother. If you want to spend all day in the park taking pictures, but he wants to do something else, go without him. No couple shares all the same interests, and there is nothing wrong with having interests totally different than your partner. Do not give up the things you love. Don't force them to do it either. Do what you love, even if you need to do it alone. Stay passionate about your hobbies. Do not sacrifice who you are to be part of a couple. Likewise, don't sacrifice it to be a parent either. You may need to trim back or alter the way you engage in the things you love, but don't give it up. Stay true to yourself.

- Marriage is work. Hard, ugly, awful work. Sometimes it just plain sucks. There will be times, for sure, that divorce will seem like a better option. I've filled out those papers more than once, myself. When you first get married, most people do it for love and hope and the future and all things optimistic. It's idealistic, it's the stuff of dreams. If you're lucky, you can ride that high for a while. But know this truth - the high always ends. Always.

- When marriage gets hard is when it matters the most. I cannot stress this enough. Everyone can do the better, richer, in health times pretty easily. The worse, poorer, sicker times, not so much. Life is filled with worse, poorer, sicker, and how you weather those times will be far more indicative of whether your marriage will last. Crises have a way of bringing people together or pushing them apart. Remember that you didn't just sign on for the good stuff, you agreed to be there for each other even and especially when it's bad. I can tell you from experience, the sicker is probably the hardest, particularly if you are dealing with any kind of mental illness. Living though cancer was a piece of cake compared to dealing with depression, PTSD and anxiety in a marriage. You will find that what started out about love will evolve and that there will be many times in your marriage where love is wholly irrelevant. Marriage isn't about love...not in the long run. Love won't keep you together. There has to be more.

- Own your shit. Both of you. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes bad decisions. Everyone does things that hurt their partner, sometimes as an unintended consequence, sometimes on purpose. Everyone. You are not immune to this, nor is your spouse. This will happen, of that I will give you a 100% guarantee, no matter how totally blissfully happy and in love you may be right in this moment. It will happen. What you do afterwards matters more. Don't lie, don't cover things up, don't minimize it, don't deflect blame. Don't. Own your shit. Admit it when you screw up and hurt them. Apologize and mean it. Learn from your mistakes and don't do it again.

- Counseling won't work unless you do the work. Being habitual, showing up for appointments and going through the motions isn't enough. Unless you are committed to working on improving your marriage, nothing will change no matter how long you are in counseling. In fact, it'll probably get worse. I know from experience. Far more important than marriage counseling is individual therapy. The vast majority of problems within a marriage come from unresolved issues that one person has going on. Or that they both have. Fix yourself first. Until and unless you do that, marriage counseling is a complete waste of your time. We tried marriage counseling for a while. It was an abysmal failure. We both had other things to deal with individually, and are still working on that.

- Don't be a selfish asshole. We are all selfish at times, we are all assholes at times. It's part of life. If it becomes more than occasional, you need to take a step back and re-evaluate what you're doing. Take a long, hard look in the mirror. Strip it down and get ugly with it. If you are even for a moment contemplating an affair, ask yourself why and be totally honest about it. If you're blaming your partner, I can promise that you are wrong. It is never the proper way to deal with unhappiness in a marriage. You will, unequivocally and without doubt, make everything worse. If you are an alcoholic or drug user, you are kidding yourself if you think it doesn't hurt anyone else. If you have depression or other mental health issues going on and don't seek help for them, you aren't just damaging yourself, you are hurting others. If you are rationalizing any of this stuff right now, stop it. This isn't just about you anymore. It's no one else's job to fix you, and even if they wanted to, they can't. Fix yourself...you're the only one who can.

- Things change, people change. Whoever you are married to now isn't the person you married all those years ago. People evolve. They change. You change. Relationships must as well as a direct consequence.

- Remember why you married them. Sure, it's hell being married sometimes, but you did this for a reason, right? Woo your spouse, even when you can't stand them. Tell them you love them, even when you hate them - those two emotions are most definitely not mutually exclusive. Kiss each other goodnight, even when you've been screaming at one another for hours. At the end of the day, you chose this person for a reason. Try and remember that.

I leave you with this. I've seen things, you guys. My marriage is far from perfect, but it's closer now than it has been in a very long time.

My husband likes to steal my cell phone and change my ringtones when I'm not looking. When this song came out, he set this as his ringtone on my phone.

Because he knows just how perfectly this describes us.

He's not wrong.

Today I am sharing the stories from two T1 Moms, about how their children were diagnosed with diabetes. I opted to run them together because there were so many similarities in the stories.

The lessons to take away here are these: know the symptoms and understand that most of them are totally non-specific, when in doubt always always always just go to the doctor just in case it is something to worry about and never underestimate the ability of a child to tell you that something is wrong.

I love both of these ladies, and they have both been tremendously supportive to me and my son in the past year. With love and respect, their stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

During the Christmas break of 2011, my son started to have issues with his stomach. Food started to not settle. Anything touching it, would come back up or hurt staying down. Should have been the first red flag. I didn't know. The month or so following that break, he spent either in his room sleeping or at school. He was 12, I thought he was either having a growth spurt or puberty was showing its ugly head. So, when he started losing weight because of the lack of desire for food and sleeping all the time, I blamed puberty. Second red flag. I didn't notice more thirst. I didn't notice more bathroom breaks.


February 6th, 2012. I got a phone call from the school nurse. She told me that she had a talk with my son. He had come to see her by way of the school psychologist. I found out he had gone to see the psychologist because he didn't feel well and he didn't think we (his parents) were listening to him. So he did something about it. And the psychologist took him to the nurse. Who in turn, called me at work. We talked about what was going on. I told her what I thought was going on. Puberty, and maybe a cold? I didn't know, so I agreed that he should be seen by his doctor. I got off the phone with the nurse from school and promptly called the doctor. That was a Monday. He got an appointment for Friday, February 10th.


I took him to the doctor. Told him all the things going on, and he ordered blood work and urinalysis. Now, my son is terrified of needles. Especially shots and draws from the arm. This was agonizing for him, damn near panic attack. We went back to the exam room. We waited. We joked. We laughed. Then the doctor came back in. He looked at my son. He looked at me. Then he said that my son was in something called Diabetic Ketoacidosis. And we needed to go directly to the Children's Hospital. Essentially his body was eating itself to keep going. My heart stopped. My brain exploded. My perfect baby. My 12 year old son HAS DIABETES.


He was in the hospital for a week. It took that long to bring his numbers down. And to educate him, as well as us. He learned what to do and when. He learned from endocrinologists. He learned from dietitians. He talked to pediatric psychologists. The Children's Hospital was AMAZING.


HE SAVED HIS OWN LIFE. HE did it. He talked to people until someone heard him. And for that I will forever be grateful.


Things don't always present with clear cut symptoms. Excessive drinking and peeing are classic indicators. But I didn't see them. I missed the other flags. I missed it all. I failed my son. My guilt over my part will never lessen. But my pride in my son? Never will diminish. He is amazing. He can calculate his ratios in his head, without a calculator. He still panics with a shot, or IV, or blood draw. BUT he does his testing on his fingers for his daily testing with no issue. Yes, he hits bottom from time to time. Yes, his numbers go all wonky when he's sick. BUT this is not the sum of him. He is NOT defined by his pancreas's inability to produce insulin.

- Anonymous

My daughter, Laura, turned 11 on February 11 2010. She played softball on 2 teams. The little league and a travel ball team. One Saturday in March she came to me carrying a laptop and crying. When I asked her what was wrong she showed me the web page on the laptop. It was web MD's symptoms of type 1 diabetes. 

Yesterday, little boy dropped a full glass bottle of milk on the tile floor.

It shattered, and the spill radius of milk fairly sufficiently covered most of the kitchen and dining room.  It took a good long time to clean it up. The whole time his little feet were running back and forth to the laundry room to grab more towels.


Every so often, he'd stop and stare at me for a second, fidget with his hands behind his back and quietly ask me if I was mad.

I always told him no. Of course not.

Then I'd ask him in return to make sure that he didn't have any cuts on his feet and to stay back so he didn't step on the glass.

He was afraid he was in trouble.

I was afraid he was hurt.

As I sat on the floor in the middle of the afternoon using the light streaming in from the windows to make sure I got every tiny shard of glass, I remembered.

When I was a little girl, as Mini-Me is now, I tended to overreact about little things just like she does. I would spill milk, rarely, and the first few times I remember doing it I cried. Literally, I cried over spilled milk. 

One night at dinner, my Dad spilled his milk on purpose, just to make a point.

He waited and watched for my reaction. 

He didn't react at all. He just sat there. I was confused. I was probably about the age Mini-Me is now.

After a while of this bizarre silence, us sitting around a table pooled with milk, he shrugged his shoulders then got up and grabbed some towels. He asked me to help him clean it up.

Mom, on the other side of the table, held the plates up and wiped everything down with a wet dishcloth.

When it was all cleaned up, they both just said that sometimes life is messy. There's no point getting upset about little things like this, just clean it up. 

They didn't freak out. They didn't cry. They weren't angry. They just fixed it.

How much in life is like this? How many things do we spend time worrying about, being upset about, being angry about, but do nothing to fix them? How much energy do we waste on the things that don't deserve it, how many things can we just seek solutions to instead of over thinking?

Probably a lot more than we realize.

As I sat on the floor scavenging for the last pieces of glass under cabinets, it all came back, this lesson my parents taught me so long ago.

Sometimes life is messy. Don't worry about the small stuff. Just clean it up.

You never really appreciate how right they are in the moment, maybe not even for years or decades afterwards. These people, though, they had far more wisdom than we realized. Those lessons, whether we realized we learned them at the time or not, they're in there. Sometimes it just takes spilling the milk to remember.

Mom always said that if it wasn't going to matter ten years from now, then it shouldn't be a big deal now. There is a lot of truth in that, and it's something I try to remember as I parent my own children. Far too often we get caught up in the minutia of life, spend too much time worrying about the stuff that isn't worthy of so much attention.

I finished wiping the floor down, thanked my parents for the lessons they taught me, scooped up my little boy and went on with my day.

It's November, you guys.

So you know what that means. Half the people on Facebook will post whatever they are grateful for in the most saccharin way for the next few days, then run out of family members to mention and give up. A handful will make it to the end of the month. The rest of the people tend to just make sarcastic comments about whatever other people are grateful for. Some of us fall into all those categories.

Here's my philosophy...not that I think anyone cares.

I am doing it because I have to. November is a really hard month for me, and I need to look for the things in my life that I am grateful for right now, even if none of them are as simple or perfect as they seem. I try to make my posts real. I don't discount the struggles.

But, at the end of the day, my heart is filled with gratitude.

Sometimes it's for my children. Sometimes it's for my husband. Sometimes it's for vodka. Sometimes it's for ativan. Sometimes it's for therapy. Sometimes it's for my private groups on FB that save my sanity on a daily basis. Sometimes it's for the handful of people who don't ask me to explain myself, who just take me as I am and even if they don't understand, they love me anyway. Sometimes that gratitude is filled with hurt and pain. Sometimes it's filled with hope.

I can promise you one thing, if you're a friend of mine on Facebook, everything I write is real. My life is complicated, but I consider myself lucky to be where I am, even when it hurts. Feel free to roll your eyes at me if you must. If you haven't figured it out by now, you should know that I'm not explaining anything. Take me or leave me, but don't question my truth.

Incidentally, I've been deleted by a few people for that.

Incidentally, I'm fine with it.

Anyway, it's Tuesday. Let's go get angry.

The Asshole Response to an Asshole
I'm sure that by now you have heard about the young woman who dressed as a Boston Marathon runner for Halloween, complete with dirt and grime and blood and shrapnel. She's young, but not really young enough to pull the immaturity card. She was stupid enough to post the picture online, and it didn't take long for it to get all over the place.

I'm not telling you her name, posting a link or the picture on purpose.

I'm not doing it because the response of the people in the interwebs has been horrid. Like, worse than her costume choice.

She has received death threats. Her parents are being harassed. She lost her job.

She's stupid. She's impulsive and insensitive. She's lacking in the empathy department. She's all of those things.

But she doesn't deserve death threats, nor do her parents.  Should she have lost her job? I don't know. I guess it depends on what she does for a living. Some employers have rules about behavior outside the workplace, and I would venture a guess that this may have violated them...if she had a job with those restrictions. If she didn't, reality is that the vast majority of employers can fire you for any reason, and maybe they just couldn't handle the media attention, the phone calls. Maybe they are taking a hit in business because of her affiliation with them. I don't know, and I'm not going to find out.

I feel bad for her, but not that bad.

If we as a society want to preach about not bullying, about respecting other people, about all that stuff, then it can't be okay to harass someone just because they made a horribly bad choice. I'm sure she's learned her lesson. Sure, she shouldn't have done it in the first place and totally brought this on herself....but that doesn't give the internets a free pass to be an asshole.

The Internet is Free, Right? Not for long...
One of the most magnificent things about living in the times we live in is this thing right here. The internet. This virtual world that we can connect to from anywhere in the world, with a phone or a computer or a gaming system. All the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips. We can talk to people on the other side of the planet. We can learn and share things in a way that we never have been able to in history.

All we need is a connection.

Which we already pay for, for the most part. Unless you do all of your internet surfing in a public library, odds are you are paying for internet service in some form. You have a data plan on your phone, you pay for internet hookups at home and set up your own networks to connect your devices to.

It's not free to connect, but once you're on, the world is your oyster (unless you want to look at any of the subscription sites).

Enjoy it while it lasts.

The giant telecommunications companies are trying to figure out a way to squeeze more out of the internet than they are already squeezing from all the consumers of the world who pay for access. Until now, they didn't charge websites for levels of access, but because of a court ruling, that all might be changing. What this means is that they could demand that sites pay for levels of service. If you want your site to run fast, you have to pay more. If you want more pages supported, you have to pay more. If your traffic is so and so, you have to pay more.

Net neutrality as we know it may not exist much longer. 

The Reason I am a Mean Mom
My oldest son has wanted to play football for years. YEARS.

Most people we know have pushed me to sign him up for years. YEARS.

He is a big kid. He's always been a big kid. He would be an asset to a line, for sure.

He has never played football.

There are a few reasons. He had two consecutive years of hernia surgeries, then a few concussions that happened just because he isn't a graceful child. I told him for a while that if he could make it a year without a concussion or surgery, I would entertain the idea.

I encouraged him to go out for wrestling, using the guise (totally legitimate by the way) that wrestling would help him learn body control, to use his weight, to figure out his center of gravity, to give him core strength, to condition him....all of which would be useful on the line if he ever wanted to play football.

It's been a while, longer than a year, since his last concussion or surgery. He's still not on a field.


He's not on one because the game is a brutal one. It's violent. It seems to be getting more violent, even and especially at the highest levels. The NFL is under fire for the issue of traumatic head injuries, and recently settled with many former players, though the settlement stipulated that they don't have to admit any kind of liability for the injuries.   

A book just came out which goes even further into the issue, stating that the NFL has tried to hide to magnitude of the problem, even having reports published by the NFL League physician (who is not in the field of neurology or sports medicine, incidentally) stating that the concussions aren't as problematic as some say and that players can safely return to the field within days after a TBI. The PBS series Frontline has examined the issue in detail. 

All of this is well and good. The players in the NFL are adults, and should have some level of awareness of the dangers inherent in the sport, right?

They should, but their jobs are wholly dependent on putting butts in the seats, making the game exciting and raw, taking and throwing hard hits.

Kids, though, don't have the ability to reason through all the risks and benefits.

They want to play because their friends play, because their families want them to play, because they want to be like the guys playing on any given Sunday.

So they put on a bunch of pads and the latest and greatest helmets, and step on to a field, protected, we think by all that foam and plastic.

The problem is that the helmets don't help. A new study just came out saying that the protection they give isn't nearly enough.

This is why my son doesn't play football.

He'd be great at it, maybe, but protecting his brain is more important than a jersey.

I live with juvenile diabetes everyday. But, I do not check my child’s sugars.

I live with juvenile diabetes everyday. But, I do not wake up to do 3 a.m. checks.

I live with juvenile diabetes everyday. But, I so not have to worry about keeping insulin cool.

I live with juvenile diabetes everyday. But, I do not have to worry about keeping pump supplies on hand.

I live with juvenile diabetes everyday. But, I sleep through the night without worrying if my child will be awake in the morning. Because she is already dead. You read that correctly. The last time I spoke to my daughter was September 15, 2011.

A while back, I wrote up a post on taking better pictures of your kids (or anything for that matter).  The vast majority of that advice can be as easily applied to cell phone cameras as to ordinary cameras, and I recommend reading that as well.

I also wrote a note on Facebook a while back on taking better self-portraits, which will come in handy in a week or so when we arrive at the self portrait day in the current challenge.

Here is that note:

Taken with a cell and filtered

Cell selfie, no editing

Cell selfie, cropped a little

I even went on vacation without my real camera last year. It made me twitchy, but I survived.

Cell phone cameras have come a long way, and many of them have some of the features of "real" cameras these days. Add in editing capabilities within the phones themselves or through apps, and believe me when I tell you that it is entirely possible to take really good pictures with a cell phone.

To prove this point, during my photo challenge earlier this year, I took every single picture with my cell phone...I just didn't tell people that ahead of time. When I confessed to it after the challenge was over, many couldn't believe that they had all come from that little device in my pocket.

Here are some of the most important tips for using cell phone cameras:

* Tap the screen to focus the camera. This is probably the single most important thing to learn with cell phone cameras. A little rectangular box will pop up on the screen, tap the point in the image field where you want the camera to focus, then take the picture.


* Cell phone cameras are notoriously bad at focusing when there are several sources of light or reflection. What works sometimes is to zoom out a little bit then attempt to re-focus.



* Just like with a regular camera, avoid the flash like the plague. Keep a steady hand.


* The zoom on a cell camera is strictly digital and will never be as good as a real lens. When possible, get closer to your subject rather than zooming in. You will sacrifice clarity for zoom, and pictures will come out grainy.

* Cell phones do not have the capability to do very tight macro shots, at least none that I have ever seen. They can do details, but not the fine minute stuff that a real camera can do. Play with the macro setting and try to take pictures of finer and finer details. Push the limits of your device, but understand that it will never be as good as a camera with a lens specifically made for macro shots.


* Cell phone cameras aren't great at action shots, even in the sports setting. What sometimes can capture images better is to use the setting where the camera automatically takes several pictures per second with one touch, then you can pick from them which ones are the best. (go through the camera settings to find it) Be sure that you have bright, natural lighting if you are planning to use this setting. Indoor lighting, even the brightest, may result in blurry images in this setting because the shutter speed is so fast. You can manipulate the settings to take pictures like this one though.

He's not really running that fast. ;)

* Cell phone cameras also aren't great at longer exposure pictures, though you can get better at them if you stabilize the phone on a solid surface and make sure not to bump, shake or jostle it at all. The nighttime and/or low light settings leave the shutter open longer, but the longer exposure also results in more image distortion if the phone is moved at all. Set it on a table or small tripod thing (they have some that look like little bendable spiders), and you'll get better pictures.

* Use the timer for pictures of yourself and other people when you are taking them at arm's length. You can actually take fabulous pictures this way. Make sure your lighting is good, flip the screen, and set a timer to give yourselves a few seconds to smile.


Every picture in this post was taken with a cell phone.

Get out there and play with it, this magical device in your pocket that can do all the things.

November is an emotionally loaded month for me, always has been.

I do okay for the first couple of weeks, still coming down off my Halloween high, then the end of the month starts to get closer and closer and closer.

Thanksgiving is one of those holidays filled with family drama and emotional baggage. All the feelings.

This year will be different though, because it just will.

I know that going in.

It will be different because both of my parents are gone. The guilt about not being where I feel like I should is gone. There are no more heart wrenching phone calls. No more wishing I could be in two places at once. No more regretting moving far away, no more second guessing what things might have been like.

It's just, well, over.

Thanksgiving is always hard anyway because my father's birthday falls during that week. He wouldn't want us to be sad, so we try not to be. We tell stories about the silly things he did, we eat cherry cheesecake, and we usually break out National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation since it was always one of his favorite movies, and one that we got the green light to watch once Thanksgiving was over and done with.

Thanksgiving is also hard because it was the holiday that motivated my mother to get out of the hospital after her first amputation. She wanted to be here, with us, and she was. Nothing else about that time, the years before, or the years after would be simple and easy, but for that moment in time, she and I wanted the same thing. We both worked hard to make it happen. She was here, with us, around the table that year.

I'm not conflicted about where I should be anymore. There's no one left to tug at my heart to go other places. No one that I need to try and call over and over and over again until I can get through. No messages I am waiting for.

I won't have to explain to the kids why we couldn't be somewhere else with someone else right now.

We can just be here.

We can just be.

Maybe this is the silver lining in the clouds of grief. Maybe this is the reprieve from the sadness and loss. Maybe this is the thing that comes in and fills the void left by those who are gone.

Maybe this freedom to live fully in the moment without second guessing myself, to be fully present instead of wishing I could be in another place, to be entirely here and now, maybe this is the gift hidden in grief.

We spend so much of our lives trying to do the right thing, to be the right kind of people, to make the right choices, to please those we love. We do this for many reasons, not the least of which is that as a child, no matter how old we are, we never want to disappoint our parents.

I don't have anyone to disappoint anymore.

It's freeing, in a bizarre way that I sense only those walking the earth without parents anymore can understand.

I can just be here.

I can just be.

Without regret.


I can be where I should have been all along, where I needed to be, where I was almost all the time, but I can be here without regret now. 

That is a gift.

It's one I didn't want, this is true, but it's one that I am grateful for anyway.