The Wild Wild Wests

no.... i am not talking about the salt on the rim of a big, ice cold margarita glass...although that sounds mighty fine right about now... i am talking about sweat and tears.  you see i was at crossfit the other day trying to do this lift. trying to get it right...perfect.  then getting frustrated with myself for not getting under the bar enough or keeping my elbows tight enough.  at the end of that workout the coach said "good job today guys, remember olympic lifters spend years trying to perfect that move."  those words stayed with me, and not because i have any intention of becoming an olympic lifter or even anything other than just a mom trying to stay out of the mom jeans. its just that when he said those words the light came on in my brain and i realized that wherever we are in this life we are all "spending years trying to perfect it".  how about letting go of the idea of perfect and just living...dear god that is so much easier said than done.  i ...

(for my new friend tecla~ here is a new post, as you requested ;) if you are my facebook friend then you know that i have been posting a picture a day since february began in honor of heart awareness month. as i posted today's picture i stopped to think....should i really use this one. you know the one with the fresh incision, iv's, lines and drains coming out all parts of my sons body.  i almost didn't post it, but then i did. you know why? because it's the truth. it's our life. its my sons life.  sure it may not be easy to look at. people may wonder why i would share pictures of my son in that condition. i say this....if he can endure it, you can look at it, learn about it and help raise awareness. if it were your baby you sure as hell would.  it's really easy to look at them and say man that really sucks then continue on with life, but behind the pictures are endless hours, days, months and years of fighting to live. he fights so goddamn hard friends.  ...

i don't really remember when i started writing...i mean i remember the vows of love that i wrote to whoever my crush of the month was back in middle school, i's dotted with hearts to boot. but really writing...maybe high school.  i know i have always been a deep girl.  sometimes to deep i think. i had to watch my grandma, the only mom i have ever known, slowly and painfully die from leukemia right before my innocent nine year old eyes.  i think from then on i was changed forever. i miss her just as hard today as the day we lost her... she taught me how to be the mommy that i am today. even as young as i was the years that i had her are ingrained in me. she was an artist, i am a writer. she would be proud.  i remember in college writing letters to her when i thought my world was crumbling around my feet.  i realize now that the world was not in fact crumbling around my feet, and i can say i now know what that truly is. i still have those letters to her under the ...

there's thing i carry around twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. i have had it for awhile now and some days it's just there, like an extension of me and i carry on. other days, it's dragging behind me, ever so burdening in it's heaviness.  some days, like today it makes my heart stop.  that weight pressing down on my mommy heart as i watch his color change before my eyes. it's my "griefcase". i have to sit on it to get it to even close. it's so stuffed with old tears, worry and fear that the zipper has ripped on one side and that fear hangs out like the stuffing in my golden retrievers toy.  i've tried to unpack that damn thing, but you can't unpack when you haven't reached your final destination... we are still traveling this journey.  some days my griefcase gets lost in transit and i move along,  but most days she's right behind me that ole' ball and chain never far behind. i can fake it til i make it, but behind the s...

the house is quiet...i should really shower or eat or whatever, but i am going to write because well...it's been to long. i love to stop by, drop bombs, and peace out for weeks on end. it's good suspense, no...? one of my new years resolutions was to make more time to write and since we are on day seven, almost eight at this rate, of the new year i can see that that resolution is quickly going to hell in a hand basket.  guess there's always next year... ******************* we did big things over the holidays.  cup runneth over things. made mad memories things.  first and foremost we celebrated a boy who struggled for three years to be here with us. who has endured hellish surgeries and recoveries to be here with us. and who did it with a grace we can all be envious of.  i still don't know where the time went, but here we are three years out, three open heart surgeries out and he is kicking ass and taking names. just today in fact, we went to the pediatricians offi...

i was driving down the road the other day after having dropped off two sets of kids only to return a couple hours later to pick up said kids thinking holy hell i am a serious taxi driver at the moment... my mind then wandered back to this day in the hospital...my friend was sitting beside me, this friend is the friend...you know the one that is always there. silent and f ing strong even though she may not be on the inside.  her name is morgan and i am willing to bet she has stayed with me at the hospital every. single. solitary. time that paxton has.  it started off a bit rocky when the sight of him at one week old post open heart surgery had her woozy, but from then on she was never not there for that boy or me for that matter.... anyway on one of the many stays i was crying to her that " i just want to get back to real life." she looked at me in her calm, quiet way and said "jen, this is real life..." i will never forget those words, because what i hadn't st...

in light of my last post, i would like to say thank you to the overwhelming love and support that rolled in from it. i spent a great deal of time going back and forth on whether i should write about that. in the month that i was absent from my sanctuary here, i realized there was only one reason i hadn't stopped to write... i don't come here to paint this perfect picture of my life or life in general.  oh' don't get me wrong, it. is. a. crazy. freaking. beautiful. life. no. doubt. but that is not to say there aren't major roadblocks along the way and if i skirted around those road blocks and poured glitter all over them and instagram'd them then they wouldn't be the real thing now would they.  (ps it should be noted that i am ALL for "thinstagram" and "hotstagram" just not in my writing) ten years from now i want to look back on my posts when i read them and think. oh yah! yep! i remember exactly what i felt like in that moment because m...