Category Archives: It's All About Me

Taking stock

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May 2013 GratitudeAs a very busy spring ends, I’m taking a breath before the season changes again.
Oh, these transitions. They require so much practical planning and emotional adjusting.

Depending on the day, I find myself either madly cramming in every last project on my hefty To Do list, or paralyzed by those jobs that simply won’t get done before summer begins.

When I find myself overwhelmed, my first urge is always to freeze time. I’m a time junkie.
Just one more second…I swear that’s all I need.

So I do. I find my camera and I freeze time. And the results become a visual gratitude journal, complete with friends, family and the wondrous, inspiring place I call home.

When words fail me, my eyes save me. Every single time.

Mealtime

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IMG_5086 (1)So, my pals and I are doing another blog hop. Yay! You might remember the last one, where I bravely shared a photo of myself from 1992 wearing, as someone pointed out, “Mom jeans before I was even a Mom.”

This time we’re discussing The worst meal I ever cooked and served to loved ones. I feel sure my funny friends will come up with compelling and hilarious stories, but I gotta be honest with you…this is a tough topic for me. Certainly not because I do or don’t cook terrible meals. But because it’s Thursday and hello I have hardly any remaining brain capacity to think about mealtime topics. I’m simply maxed out for the week. My weekly allotted Think About Food time was spent on panicked meal planning, high-speed grocery shopping, pre-dinner interrogations, dinnertime whining, and morning cajoling. There’s precious little energy remaining to wonder how the meal ranked on my family’s Yum Scale.

I am quite confident everyone has stirred around eaten what was on their plates and that what they avoided ate was as healthy as possible. But beyond that, I couldn’t possibly tell you how it falls on their radar.

Call me callous or lazy, but this is where things stand right now in our house. We are all about simplicity nowadays. In fact, I adopted a Family Mealtime Mantra just to keep us all on the same page. Thanks to inspiration from Michael Pollan’s famous quote I’ve come up with these words to live by:

“Cook food. Not too much. Mostly edible.”

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Read more about worst meals from my talented writer friends…

Ann’s Rants
Midlife Mixtape
The Flying Chalupa
Earth Mother just means I’m dusty

Peace warrior

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The secret to staying sane as a parent? Finding the om in omg.

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Life has been especially crazy around my house lately and most days I’m struggling mightily to find the om. In my free moments I’m sneaking away and working on a new photography project…capturing the witty and whimsical graffiti around Austin and turning it into sleek, modern works of art. Check it out at ewmcguirephoto.com!

10 Reasons You Should Be Glad I Didn’t Blog in My Twenties

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1993ItalyFlorence, Italy 1992

Ready for a fun trip down Fuzzy-Memory Lane? Some friends and I are all answering the same prompt today and explaining why you should be glad we didn’t blog in our 20s. Here goes..

1. Because I’m so much cuter now without the Freshman 15. (Can you call it that when it lasts all four years?)

2. Every Monday night my blog readers would need to do the secret sorority handshake before logging on.

3. My fashion advice would have been heavily influenced by the stage where I transitioned, rather abruptly, from oh-so-preppy Molly Ringwald to the not-so-preppy Kurt Cobain.

4. That one summer I studied in Italy and learned what existential meant. (FYI, it means existing on wine, white bread and all-night discotequeing.)

5. My travel reviews would have been iffy at best. Sleeping on the floor of friends-of-friends? Adventurous! Sharing a hotel room that accommodates 3 king-size beds? Efficient! A hostel room with a bathroom door that actually closes? Luxury!

6. You would have to hear me gush over how much I looove R.E.M. Oh wait, I still do that.

7. The page you are are now reading would take 20 minutes to load via MY VERY OWN 14.4 modem and free AOL cd.

8. Remember how I got that great job writing for HealthyPet.com and all my friends thought I had found Jesus and was working for HealThyPet.com? That.

9. You would have hated me at 24. I had no college debt, a decent 9-5 job, fun co-workers, and I spent every weekend skiing or hiking in the Colorado Rockies…I’m nauseated and jealous of my former self even now!

10. My Pinterest boards would have been carefully designed with photos of our first married apartment, decorated in “Early American Wedding” style: two dozen versions of engagement poses over the mantle, a flowery Picasso poster above the sofa, and oversized silver Arthur Court bowls adorning every wobbly, wood-veneer surface you could fit into 500 square feet.

Don’t worry, there’s more! Visit my funny friends and read about their non-blogging 20s…

Wait in the Van
Tales of (Married) Mikkimoto
Ann’s Rants
Wendi Aarons
Midlife Mixtape
The Flying Chalupa
I’m Gonna Kill Him
Smacksy
Earth Mother just means I’m dusty
Motherhood in NYC
The Mama Bird Diaries
Baby on Bored

Taking inventory

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2013.01.dailylife-3

January: the time to assess and reassess. To take stock. Make plans. Set goals.

I’m shaking off my holiday hibernation and am now knee-deep in all of the above. It’s energizing to look at the long list of projects I have on my horizon.

The first thing I can share with you…I’m thrilled, once again, to be co-directing Austin’s 3rd annual Listen to Your Mother show with the fabulous Wendi Aarons. We are now accepting submissions and hope you will share your stories of the good, the bad, and the ridiculous of motherhood. For details and inspiration, visit our website and YouTube channel.

Stay tuned for more good stuff in 2013!

Thank you?

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photoMom! I love that new shirt!

Thanks, sweetie.

You know Mom, I love how you dress. And I love that you aren’t too pretty to be a Mom.
I mean, all frou-frou and what not. Your style is…what’s the word I’m looking for?

Cool?

No, that’s not it. Give me a minute…

On the road

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The twisting, two-lane road running from summertime to schooltime is littered with countless potholes and ridiculous roadside attractions.

The Valley of Cute New Alarm Clocks, which seems novel and thrilling at first, loses its luster once everyone realizes it is only open before dawn. Both the World’s Largest Pile of Paper and the Museum of Uneaten Lunches will leave you reaching for your Dramamine.

If you’ve traveled this road before you know the alllure and pitfalls of the most popular tourist traps. The PTA Mountain Range, with its promises of glory and satisfaction, sees many a climber stumble from volunteer vertigo if they don’t watch their step. The quaint Extracurricular Activity Stands with their hand-painted signs selling everything from soccer teams to scout troops…taxes might be included, but make no mistake there are hidden costs, usually in the form of snack mom or chaperone or person in charge of sewing on patches.

Be wary, travelers. This journey, it is full of sharp turns and very few straightaways.

Even getting close to home presents its own challenges. At many an intersection there is a grief-stricken child holding out his hand and begging for your attention. The clever ones make signs: “Will Work (kinda) for a Homework Pass.” “Need Just One Ride to Practice.” “Can you Spare a Video Game Privilege?” Give him a buck if you must, but then drive on, mama, drive on.

You have a destination, and I swear it’s gotta be just around the corner.

Voices

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I’m no public speaking pro. In fact, up until recently I would have preferred to get a colonoscopy in front of 3,000 people rather than speak in front of them. But sometimes life surprises you and you get to surprise it right back.

In May, one of my essays was selected as a Voice of the Year for the BlogHer 2012 conference, and I was asked to read it during the Community Keynote along with 14 other bloggers. What a thrill! The chosen essay, On Being Nine, is a mother-daughter story about harnessing the power of being nine. It’s one of my favorites, so the honor was especially sweet.

Leading up to the event, I told people that the piece was a gift to my daughter and my mother. This is very much true. But what I didn’t realize until afterward is that the Voices of the Year experience–sharing my story and voice with thousands of people–was also a gift to myself. And it was absolutely a gift I’ll never forget. I owe many people thanks.

Thank you to BlogHer for the opportunity and the virtual coaching. Thank you to my friends and family who cheered me on from near and far. Thank you to everyone who shared their own mother-daughter stories with me. (It’s pretty fantastic how many former 9-year-olds had grandiose nicknames like mine!) Thank you to the ENT doctor who tried his best to heal my laryngitis when I went completely mute two days before the conference. Thank you to everyone who said my extremely husky voice sounded cool. And finally, thank you to whoever was in charge of the Voices of the Year music. I absolutely LOVED walking out on stage to Johnny Cash! I fell into a burning ring of fire… I’m happy to report nobody went down in flames. 

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Update: The videos are now online! You can view mine here. I was honored to share the stage with such incredible talent. All of the readers brought unforgettable stories, so I encourage you to spend some time watching their videos. I especially loved the hilarious pieces by Shari Simpson of Dusty Earth Mother and Neil Kramer of Citizen of the Month, plus the touching ones by Vikki Reich of Up Popped a Fox and Dresden Shumaker of Creating Motherhood.