My cousin has a blog. Orelia Mae For the Love of Beautiful Things.
I love her.
She was my best friend when we were kids, we were supposed to go to college together, but we didn’t.
I say she was my best friend, she totally was in my mind. And whenever I saw her. . . . which, come to think of it, really wasn’t that much, we’d giggle till our stomachs ached. We sang much too much Boy George and she taught me all her favorite country songs.
We rode wet log rides in the Louisiana heat.
We sat on the front porch swatting at bugs.
And we swam all day in her back yard pool. Until the bats came out, which were totally mesmerizing to me, but to Julie. . . . .well. . . .she’d jet inside at the first sight of them.
I’m telling you all of this because, yesterday my cousin blogged that she was going to be true to herself in 2013.
And I thought, Huh. Sounds good.
I think I’ll add that to my list.
It sounded good in theory, until I started thinking about who my true self is.
Yikes.
I’m not sure she’s somebody I’d want to write home about.
So I tried it for a day, to see if this could work out.
I think my kids hate me now.
What I think I found out is, my true self is a borderline B.
- She’d like homemade food all the time. But doesn’t want to ALWAYS make it. And sort of resents that she does. I mean she likes to cook. But, come on. This is ridiculous.
- She’d like a little help cleaning the house. Or she’d like someone else to do it all together. She doesn’t want to clean the house. She hates it. HATES IT.
- She says she only wants her kids to try their hardest, but really she wants them to do better than any of the other kids. All of the other kids. All of the time.
- She’d like to do fun things. BUT ONLY if the fun stuff is something she wants to do. Not fun stuff you want to do, because that’s not fun to her.
- And well, she doesn’t really care what you’d like for dinner, she’s making what she wants, because SHE IS THE ONE WHO HAS TO MAKE IT. (see first bullet point) AND. . .if you don’t like it, she’s pissed. Because she went through all that hard work to make something she wanted to eat and you didn’t EVEN LIKE IT!!!!
See.
I told you.
This is what I’m dealing with.
Maybe I should be true to somebody else’s self.
Then maybe I’d see some growth.
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I think maybe instead of being true to myself, I should try being true to the self I know I should be.
Could be.
God would like me to be.
Like, the self that eats good ALL THE TIME.
SO super healthy.
Like disgustingly so.
Never puts an unnatural ingredient TO. HER. LIPS.
Now.
That is something I could be proud of.
I think I’ll use these here oranges from my Mother in Laws tree to help me accomplish that little task.
These may be the ugliest oranges I have ever seen, but man, are they JUICY, JUICY, JUICY. And sweet. And they photograph well.
So.
There is that.
Step one. Acceptance.
I love this time of year.
Oranges for everyone!!!!!
Orange, Carrot, Cranberry Juice!!!!!! Made in a blender:) (my ninja blender. literally called ninja. it’s not some cool blender i like to call names because it makes me seem more hip. it just is a ninja blender. which is cool. but not because it’s called Ninja. Just because it is. My NINJA. You know, like karate chop you ninja. Kinda like that, only this ninja, chop, chop, chops, food.)
Ingredients:
2 cups of baby carrots
3/4 cup water
10 oranges
1 cup cranberry juice
high speed blender (I used a Ninja)
Directions:
1. Oh golly. You’re going to love this, it’s so easy. Take your lovely carrots, and throw them into the blender. Put the top on and pulse a few times to get them chopped up. Add the water, and blend full speed for about 30 seconds.
2. Now at this point, either remove the skin from your oranges and throw them into the blender, or juice yourself (using a reamer) not worrying about the seeds. (I chose to juice using a reamer because the skin on the oranges my mother in law gave me was really thin. I didn’t want to lose any good orange matter when I cut the skin away.)
3. Stop and admire how much juice you have. Add cranberry juice.
4. Using a strainer, remove the pith from your juice.
5. ENJOY!!!!!!!
6. Take pictures of your juice next to your Christmas decorations that you still have up in the middle of January. Next to the Christmas lights you are still turning on. You know, by the stairs with all your kids crap on it. Yeah, the crap that you are photographing. That’s the one.
7. Hurry up and hide it before you kids get home. Or else they’ll suck it down their shrimpy little bodies. At least make them wait for breakfast, and you can get some kudo points for being the mom that makes fresh juice in the mornings. Which you didn’t. But who cares. The point is, they’ll think you did. Not that, is being true to myself ; /
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And Oh! One more thing . . . . .
If you have a few minutes to share your feedback on the ingredients used in personal care products (think lotions, body washes, shampoos, etc.) for babies and kids, please check out this survey from my friends at The Motherhood: https://www.
They want to know if you trust the ingredients in traditional baby/child care products, whether you’re reading product labels for personal care products the way you might read food labels, and other important and interesting topics.
There’s an option to submit your email address at the end of the survey – anyone who completes the survey and provides an email address will be entered to win one of 10 VISA gift cards worth $25. (The email address is just a way to notify the gift card winners and won’t be shared.)
