Tonya

I’m Not Cut Out For This Shit

Posted on October 29, 2014 Written by Tonya

One of the goals I set for myself this year was to submit my writing to different Web sites to gain some greater exposure and I finally, not only found the time to write a post that I felt was worthy of one of those sites, but actually submitted one.

Eek!

Lo and behold, it was accepted.

I am very honored to be featured on Scary Mommy today with a post I wrote called, I’m Not Cut Out For This Shit about a day when motherhood was seriously kicking my ass. It’s real and raw and I would be ever so grateful if you would read it.

I love and respect Jill Smokler (Scary Mommy) and the community of anything but perfect parents she has brought together through her Web site and books and I am beyond thrilled to see my words on her site.

There is nothing more powerful than the “me too” factor, so if you’re a mom I hope you’ll be able to identify with my post.

Timing My Online Life

Posted on October 29, 2014 Written by Tonya

My friend Elaine of The Miss Elaine-ous Life recently posed the question: how many hours do you think you spend online each day? My response was as follows:

Hard for me to say, a good solid two hours every night after the kids go to bed and periodically throughout the day… Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, games, etc. All on my iPhone. Maybe five hours total?

When I read blogs or write or comment, it’s usually on my laptop and nowadays that is maybe five hours per week, if I’m lucky.

Just this week for the first time Lucas asked me point blank, “Mom, why are you on your phone all the time?” That stopped me in my tracks.

I was completely guessing and in all honesty really had no idea but felt it was too much.

I don’t work so I’m not in front of a computer all day and can’t seem to find the time to write very much anymore, but my phone is always within reach, on silent so I won’t react every time it makes a sound. I hate those people who hear a message alert that is not even their own and they grab their phone anyway.

I thought it would be interesting to time myself daily for one week to see exactly how much time I actually do ~~waste~~ spend on my phone and I’m shocked at the results.

Happily shocked.

From Saturday, October 11 – Tuesday, October 21 each and every single time I used my phone or laptop, I started a stopwatch and at the end of the day, just before I fell asleep, I stopped it and captured a photo. Here are the results for nine days:

I timed everything I did: looking up directions, composing texts, phone calls, searching Google, reading blogs, reading and responding to e-mails, posting to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, taking photos, editing photos, creating notes, listening to podcasts while walking, playing games, EVERYTHING! On average I spend just over three hours on my phone per day.

Incidentally, there is a smartphone usage tracking app (of course) called Moment ($4.99 on the App Store) and the creator, Kevin Holesh designed it for the exact reasons I wanted the data. “Since it’s so difficult to convince ourselves to leave our smartphones alone, Holesh said he wants people to at least find a balance of “connected and disconnected” that’s right for them.

So often make excuses for the reasons we are online and the time it takes us away from our family and friends and what’s really important and all that time can really add up.

My goal was to track my usage for one week but I ended up doing it for 11 days because it was easy and I found it so interesting. It turns out that scrolling through my Facebook feed, posting a cute pic of my kids or playing my turn in Words With Friends doesn’t take nearly as long as I thought it did.

I wonder if my usage was reduced because I was aware of the experiment. I noticed I didn’t comment as much on Facebook, read as many articles or view as many YouTube videos.

The majority of phone time was late at night when I didn’t have anyone to attend to, when I should have been reading or writing (!) or talking to my husband, however, he is a lights out at 10 o’clock kind of person and I stay up until midnight almost every night. After we caught up and watched a show or two on TV, I turned to my phone. Perhaps I’d get a more restful sleep if I put my phone down.

I also timed my laptop usage, although during the 11 days I only used it once and for roughly an hour.

If you have ever wondered about your phone usage, I encourage you to try this challenge and please share your results. And relax, it’s probably not as much as you think!

What I’ll Miss

Posted on October 27, 2014 Written by Tonya

As I sit down on the couch to fold a load of my children’s clothes, still fresh and warm from the dryer I start to think of all the things I am going to miss.

Lola’s owl pajamas trimmed in sea foam green, the long-sleeve onesie that says “I love Daddy” across the front, Lucas’s Star Wars and superhero T-shirts, socks embedded with sand, and a pair of camouflage pants with a stain on the knee that no matter how hard I try, can’t seem to remove.

These little clothes.

They are outgrowing them faster than I’d like.

Faster than I imagined.

There’s other things too; morning “Mommy snuggles”, as Lucas calls them, him telling me I’m beautiful, coming up behind me and hugging my legs, asking for one more book or to “play with me”, his sneaky screen time shenanigans/negotiations, willingly wearing whatever I lay out for him each day and the questions. So many questions! Someday he’ll know more than me and have way more credible sources.

Lola is on her way to walking and with that will come a freedom she’s never known. It’s an exciting and witnessing a baby experience things for the first time is pure magic. Right now it is a daily occurrence and so hard to believe we are nine months into a year of her firsts.

It goes by fast. I’ve heard it from day one of becoming a mother and it’s true. Cliché, but the truest statement about parenthood.

One day you’re rocking your newborn to sleep in a freshly painted nursery with new sheets on a crib surrounded by stuffed animals and diapers and other baby paraphernalia you never even knew existed trying to remember the words to “Hush, Little Baby” and the next, you’re sending them off to kindergarten with a backpack twice their size, reviewing sight words, hosting sleepovers, building with Legos and worried that soon you won’t be able to pick them up any longer.

I love being a mother. I especially love being a mother to Lucas and Lola. Each day is eerily similar but also very different from the last.

I adore these children, these little humans full of life and love and growing and changing right before my eyes. There are more things than I cannot count about these precious days and these precious people I will miss.

Especially In October

Posted on October 7, 2014 Written by Tonya

An audible groan escapes my body as I turn the page on the calendar.

You’d never know it was Fall in Southern California based on the heat we have been experiencing. That coupled with the heavy emotion that accompanies October, it is has become my least favorite month of the year.

The anniversary of my parents deaths always evokes powerful memories of the feelings and events surrounding the early morning hours of October 15, 2007 and the days that followed. I can recall in great detail where I was, what I was doing and even what I was wearing the night my sister called to tell me they had died. Although I have never worn them again, I still own those pajamas. I can’t seem to part with them.

I remember being grateful for all the tasks at hand so that I wouldn’t just sit and cry. There were many scheduled overseas phone calls, the repatriation of my parents bodies, obtaining toxicology reports and death certificates. Not only did I feel like I was in the middle of my worst nightmare, but the pages of a crime novel.

We had to locate their will to ensure their wishes were met, contact and meet with a funeral home, write two obituaries, read through countless condolence e-mails and field questions from family and friends. There was so much to do and I had never felt that level of exhaustion before.

I also remember waking up for days with tear stained cheeks and also not really being able to look anyone in the eye for fear of completely losing it.

Seven years later, it is still hard to speak of my mom and dad in the past tense. There are things about them that have grown fuzzy and many I’ll never forget. Bittersweet memories have become part of my life, they are woven into the very marrow of my being and the sadness is permanent and irrevocable.

I’m grateful it is not the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning anymore. And yet, at least a dozen times a day it crosses my mind. More so in October.

I find ways of working them into conversations as I attempt to hold on to them and to help my son know them as I did. Of course, I realize that will be my lifelong struggle. And now that I’m a parent, I wonder if I ever really knew them myself. I always miss them.

Grief gets better, more manageable over time. I have learned to live with it as it comes and goes and I know the path toward healing and finding peace is a long one.

Especially in October.

Loss Is Loss Is Loss: A Book Review Of Rare Bird

Posted on September 30, 2014 Written by Tonya

As soon as Anna Whiston-Donaldson’s book, Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss and Love arrived in my mailbox I started reading it. I literally ripped it out of the manila envelope it arrived in as I walked up to my house and started with chapter one entitled, You’re Braver than You Think.

Something stopped me.

I knew full well what the book was about; Anna’s son Jack died in a flash flood while playing with neighborhood friends in the rain. It is a tragedy that is almost inconceivable to consider. Parents should never have to bury their children. Ever.

There was a part of me that wondered if maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to begin such a heavy story, one that was sure to cause me to draw parallels to my own grief and loss and pull me into a depression I didn’t have either the time or inclination to revisit. I wasn’t ready to go to that place in that moment.

That was the end of July.

By September, I had somehow successfully managed to avoid reading any reviews on Rare Bird or discussing the book with anyone who had already read it.

I picked it up again and finished two days later, on the third anniversary of Jack’s death. Ironic, right? I e-mailed Anna immediately to tell her how much I loved her memoir, how much I appreciated her tender words, full of wisdom and grace, beauty, love, pain and hope.

I wanted her to know that I learned something about grief by reading Rare Bird. I realized that the thing about grief is once you’ve experienced that kind of loss it’s always with you and takes very little to conjure. It could be a quote, a piece of music, a passage in a book, walking by a stranger in the supermarket that smells like someone you lost or simply sharing your grief story with others. It can happen at any time and without any warning.

Through my personal grief journey I have discovered that grief is a tricky beast and everyone experiences it differently. So much of what Anna shares I felt when I lost my parents in a tragic, fluke accident way too soon. As Anna says, “loss is loss is loss”.

Rare Bird isn’t just a memoir. It is a beautifully written handbook for anyone who is grieving, who will grieve, or who will be there for someone who is grieving, but don’t just take my word for it, her book has already been praised by The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly.

Listen to Anna tell you about her book in her own words:

Disclaimer: I received a copy of Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss and Love to assist in my review. No other compensation was received. All opinions expressed are my own.

Seeing Chicago Through A Child’s Eyes

Posted on September 22, 2014 Written by Tonya

It’s been a month since our mother/son trip to Chicago. What an amazing five days! I have always known Lucas was an extraordinary child but this trip proved it ten times over.

Since his very first airplane ride at only two months old, my son has been a great traveler provided I have his favorite snacks and activities and a full battery on the iPad. This I knew going in to this trip together, but what surprised me was the amount of patience he exhibited as we waited. We spent a lot of time waiting, from a two hour delay at the airport and long lines to enter most attractions to Uber cars and taxis, we waded through throngs of people at the breakfast buffet each morning at our hotel and waited for our names to be called at restaurants, we waited for it to stop raining so we could go back outside and have fun, we waited and waited and waited. I have decided my five-year-old has more patience in his entire body than I do in my big toe.

Lucas also behaved well throughout our trip and when other children around us were falling apart, kicking, screaming and carrying on and getting reprimanded, he kept it together. He also asked pointed questions about our surroundings, wanted to know everything he could about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (it wasn’t because a cow knocked over a lantern, by the way) and the meaning behind the different colors that lit up the skyscrapers at night. Lucas also let me take as many photos as I wanted of both him and the sights.

Chicago is perfect for children and it was a lot of fun seeing my little guy in such a big city. We didn’t walk as much as I would have liked but only because little legs can’t walk very far. We took our time getting from here to there and stopped a lot along the way to shop or eat or meander through a park.

There is so much to do in Chicago and we tackled a lot! From meeting Sue, the best-preserved T. rex on display at the Field Museum, eating stuffed pizza at the famed Giordano’s, running through the water pads at Millennium Park, taking goofy photos at “the Bean”, enjoying incredible views of the city from the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower (now known as Willis Tower), spending hours at the awesome Children’s Museum at Navy Pier and having a lot of down time in our hotel room. We shopped a little (I kind of went nuts at the Nike store) watched very little TV, and talked a lot, mostly about the upcoming school year and how much we missed home and our precious little Lola.

Lucas may have dragged me to the Lego store at the beautiful Water Tower Place more than once but I’d buy him all the Lego in the world if I could. I’m grateful for the bonding time I had with my son this summer and look forward to taking an annual summer trip with him.

Where to next year?

Best Dave Matthews Band Lyrics

Posted on September 19, 2014 Written by Tonya

If you know anything about me, have been reading Letters For Lucas for a while, or have bothered to read any of my social media bios; you know the ones that offer limited characters, then you would know I LOVE the Dave Matthews Band! I’m obsessed.

Have been since college.

Can listen to their songs on repeat and never grow tired of them.

I drag my husband to see them in concert at least once a year. Funny story… just three days before this year’s concert, Saturday, September 6 we misplaced our tickets! My husband swore he brought them home from work, where he had them mailed and I swore he didn’t. I know, I know, who gets paper tickets anymore? Super fans, that’s who! We ended up finding them (in an unlikely drawer at Todd’s office) and had a blast at the show, but our house was definitely a little tense for a couple of days.

I digress.

I suppose it could be said if you aren’t a Dave Matthews lover then this post is probably not for you, however, if you are a lover of the English language and enjoy words and the way they roll off the tongue and sound when grouped with other words, then please keep reading….

In my ever humble opinion, in no particular order, here are 11 of the BEST Dave Matthews Band lyrics:

Heaven

Posted on September 17, 2014 Written by Tonya

Always when I’m most exacerbated, it’s 100 degrees outside and I’ve made three trips to and from the car with arms full of necessities, Lola is screaming in her car seat, my phone starts to buzz and we are hitting nothing but red lights already late for karate, when his sweet voice from the backseat asks, “Are your eyes open or closed in heaven?”

Where did that come from? I was just yelling at him to put on his shoes. It’s feel as if at that very moment in time someone out there knows I need perspective. Two someones, my angels, my parents. They are urging me to stop and remember.

I take a deep inhale before I respond, “I don’t know, Lucas. I would think open.”

“Because heaven is whatever you want it to be, right?”, he asks shyly.

“Yes.” I can feel my belly tighten but I’m relieved he remembers this from previous conversations.

“But you’re really still, aren’t you?”

“No, I imagine you can dance and sing and ride your skateboard and eat your favorite desserts and build Lego all day long. You could even learn how to play golf!”

“Really?!”

“Yeah! You get to do whatever you want with anyone who has already died.”

“Like your mom and dad? Could I touch them? I’d like to hug them.”

With tears now running down my face certain of where this was headed, “They would like that very much.”

“So wait, there are stores in heaven?”

Knowing full well that the thought of Lego in heaven would peak his interest. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Then where do the Lego come from?”

“If that is what your idea of heaven is, playing with Lego then they are just there, ready for you. Boxes and boxes of Lego all lined up.”

Now I’m fearful I’ve just sold heaven to my five-year-old.

“What if I need help, you know how sometimes I need help putting them together? Will you and Daddy be there?”

This is getting too deep. And too hard on my heart.

“Lucas, heaven is just an idea. Some people think, I think that if you’re a good person here on earth while you’re alive, when you die you will go to heaven and when you’re there you get to see all of the people that you loved the most who died before you.”

I catch a glimpse of him in the rear view mirror craning his neck to look out the window, “Where is it? Why can’t we go there now? Is it above the clouds and the airplanes? I can’t see it.”

“No, you can’t see it and you don’t want to go until it’s your time.”

“But you’re going to die way after me right?”

“Oh no, I hope not!”

“When are you going to die?”

“Nobody knows when they’re going to die, but I’m going to be here for a very long time so you don’t need to worry about that, okay?”

“How long?”

“I don’t know, but I hope I’ll be here until you are my age.

Shocked that I could pull a number, an age out of thin air, “42? You’re going to die when I’m 42?”

“Lucas, death is very serious. It’s final. When you die, you are no longer here.”

“What would you do if I died?”

“I can’t even bear the thought. I would cry morning, noon and night. I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I would miss you so much.”

“What would you do with my toys?”

“They’d probably stay right where there are for a very long time.”

“You could give them away, Mom. I’d be okay with that.”

I love my son more than words and I sincerely hope I haven’t done irreparable damage to his innocent mind, world or faith with all my talk of a heaven I don’t know exists.

The Great Debate [In My Head]

Posted on September 16, 2014 Written by Tonya

I hear Lola stir in her crib upstairs just as I’m half way through an article on the Today Parents Website. She’s cooing and talking joyfully at first and then her pleads became more urgent.

I know as I climb the stairs to her room I’ll never finish the article. I’ll never get back to any of the tabs open on my laptop. At least not today. I’m excited to see my baby as she has been napping for over an hour and we can now take our daily walk and play and look at books together but I’m also dismayed that the quiet me time I had been enjoying for the last 90 minutes is now over. I didn’t accomplish nearly as much as I had hoped. Damn it! Why didn’t I spend more time writing?!

One of the things I have tried to instill in Lucas is this mantra:

Chores before play, put away one game before setting up another, errands before park, etc.

I first heard it two years before I became a mother in the 2007 movie, The Great Debaters with Denzel Washington. I liked it then and love it now that I have children. I’ve also tried to follow it myself and it seems to work (most of the time) with my son.

My days are long and start the second my feet hit the floor. Full of tasks I have to do…

Make beds.

Make breakfasts, lunch, snacks, bottles.

Care for the dog.

Lay out clothes.

Change the baby.

Pick up stray socks, dirty bibs, Lego.

Assist Lucas as he packs his backpack.

Load the car.

It’s no different in your house.

Mornings are particularly and notoriously busy for households with children, trying to get everyone what they need to start the day.

A mom’s “have to do’s” last All. Day. Long. As soon as one need is met, it is followed up with another and another and another. And even our free time is not our own because when the kids are in school or napping is when the real work happens. I mean, who can sweep the floor with an adorable seven-month-old scooting around or an anxious Kindergartener ready to play another round of UNO? I certainly can’t.

So, alas… the things I want to do fall by the wayside. I make sure to exercise five days a week because if I don’t, I start to get twitchy. But apart from that, all I want to do lately is write. Writing is tricky, I can’t just sit down at my desk and write, I have to first peruse the Internet, respond to an e-mail, pay a bill, place a Diapers.com order, take a Buzz Feed quiz, get lost in the vortex that is Facebook.

I must tell myself every morning: After the kids are in bed and dinner is cleaned up and put away, I’ll stay up late and write.

And every night I crash within minutes of my children or I fall into bed too exhausted to do anything but exchange a few words with my husband and watch another episode of Chopped while I play Words With Friends.

Sigh! It’s the great debate in my head these days… when to write. Not what to write, just when?!?!

I was on a roll the other day and considered giving Lola a piece of paper to keep her occupied for a few minutes. And then I thought better and got down on the floor with her and worked on spit bubbles and mouth noises. It was time better spent, but my head is on overdrive and I must find some hours in the day to devote to writing.

Do you struggle with this too? When do you find the time to do the things you’re passionate about?

I’m Not Cut Out For This Shit

Related Posts:

Timing My Online Life

Related Posts:

What I’ll Miss

Related Posts:

Especially In October

Related Posts:

Loss Is Loss Is Loss: A Book Review Of Rare Bird

Related Posts:

Seeing Chicago Through A Child’s Eyes

Related Posts:

Best Dave Matthews Band Lyrics

Related Posts:

Heaven

Related Posts:

The Great Debate [In My Head]

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

Related Posts:

What I Write About