Category: Way back when
I know this is a blog about trying to be a greener mom and greening my family. But I like for my readers to know a bit more about me, so every so often I throw in something personal.
I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, Texas with my three sisters. My parents divorced when I was in third grade, and my mom worked hard to try and keep it all together. It wasn’t easy for her, she had a high school education but hadn’t worked to support a family of four children until my parents split. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for her, I was caught up in my own kid world as all kids can be.
I had the chance recently to talk to a friend about nothing green. Instead, I was asked if there were any particular books that I loved as a child. I couldn’t name just one book, but I could without hesitation say that Beverly Cleary was my all time favorite author. I can just feel many of you right this second nodding your heads and saying, she was one of my favorites, too! Thank you to Danielle Smith for
There's A Book
giving my readers this opportunity to get to know me a bit better.
Please read my interview on There’s a Book.
And tell me – what was your favorite Beverly Clearly book?
I’m an active woman. I take care of an acre of land, I clean my house, I take care of my kids. Learning how to ride a unicycle. I run 15-18 miles a week. Or at least I used to…until!
Sometime this past September I hurt my back. I have no clue how I did it. It just starting hurting – alot. But not constantly. On and off. A few days of severe pain, and then a week of ‘just fine’. I didn’t get it, what set it off, or what made it better.
I’m no stranger to back pain.
In September 1997 I was crossing a street at a busy intersection, and a car came flying around the corner and almost hit me. I threw myself out of the way, sort of a flinging, twisting motion. Probably kind of silly looking. I didn’t get hit, and the car went on its way. I felt a *pop* in my back. The next day I was in so much pain. If you have back pain, you know this pain. After months of pain, I had an MRI, revealing a ruptured a disc in my neck and back. I had a little physical therapy and after a year, I was fine. Occasionally I dealt with pain, but it was under control. Nothing some Advil couldn’t help.
So, I had an MRI right before Thanksgiving and it showed a herniated disc in my neck and low back. Bummer!
The spine doctor prescribed physical therapy (which I started in January after the holidays) and pain meds. Alieve, Hydrocodone, and cyclobenzaprine. Cyclobenzaprine is an anti-depressant. An anti-depressant! The doc explains that the off label/secondary use for this med is as a muscle relaxant. I did not want to get started taking that for my pain. I do not like to be altered mentally. I have been drunk twice in my life. No I am not kidding.
So I would take large amounts of Advil and Alieve, anti-inflammatories, to help get me through the day. Alieve, 500 mg sometimes twice a day, and Advil, 600-800 mg sometimes twice a day. That is way too much for an extended period of time, but what choice did I have? I would even have a dose sitting by my bed with a glass of water and a banana (don’t take these products without food in your stomach!) to take in the middle of the night so I would be able to get up and get the children going to school.
My dad and step mom were here from Germany for 3 weeks in October. They pulled out a small bottle of peppermint oil and explained that they take it with them everywhere for a myriad of uses. My stepmother rubbed some of it on my neck, and would you believe, I felt a cooling/warm sense of relief and refreshment. And I smelled delish!
The relief I felt is based on the fact that peppermint oil is a counter stimulant or counter irritant. You have been practicing counter stimulation if you have ever rubbed your child’s head when they bumped it – the feeling of the rubbing overrides the sensation of the pain. Think about the nurse who gives your child a shot, then rubs it and makes it ‘all better’.
There are several products on the market that provide the same effect as peppermint oil. Ben Gay, Icy Hot, Mineral Ice, to name a few. But they smell like ass. I don’t want to smell like ass. I have already been through that. And I wasn’t sure about all the ingredients in those products.
Turns out peppermint oil has quite a few uses. Such as:
- A few drops in water can help with gas, bloating, nausea, cramping and stomach upset. Mint tea is an good option.
- Rubbed on the forehead or temples, it can relieve headache tension.
- Muscle tension and pain relief – like I mentioned before, and the it increases the blood flow to the area of injury. Increased blood flow aids in healing, bonus!
- Help alleviate stress and general tension.
- It can help alleviate motion sickness
- Scientifically proven to ease irritable bowel syndrome.
- It doesn’t smell like ass.
There are many more uses for peppermint oil, just Google it.
I picked up a bottle of organic peppermint oil at Whole Foods for about $8. A bargain! It was nice to be able to get through some days without the use of over-the-counter meds, give my body a break.
I also like Tiger Balm, which works the same way as peppermint oil. But my husband hates the smell and scoots far away from me when I have it on. There are different strengths and sometimes I need something a bit more heavy duty. Also available at Whole Foods. (They have it all, don’t they?)
I must forewarn you (TMI alert!)
I highly recommend you do NOT apply peppermint oil or Tiger Balm until AFTER you have put in your contacts, put in a tampon, wiped after a visit to the loo, if you can help it. I have done all three. Holy moly, my bits were on fiyah! I told my husband my va-jay-jay was burning and his interest perked until I explained what was going on. No sexy.
Just so you know, my back is doing much better.
I’m a mom trying to live green. But right now I am sharing just as a mom.
I am 40. I am light years away from being a teenager. But I have a very good memory, many will tell you. (Especially my husband). I remember those high ups & low downs well. Women experience it differently than men, I believe. In technicolor, directed by Spielberg. That roller coaster of emotions you rode with abandon. The utter drama you could create out of nothing, over nothing. The stuff you never thought you would get over, but did. Eventually. I remember having room mate issues my first year of college that I was SURE some big Hollywood producer or publisher would want to make into a movie or a book it was THAT BAD. HA! I laugh now! When I watch any reality television, I know now, I was boring. Comparatively so.
I was 12 when I first ‘went’ with a boy. Whatever that meant then. He was just testing out the waters of having a girlfriend, and I, needy & clingy, did not fit the bill. A couple of weeks into it (a long time in the 12 year old world) he gave me the equivalent of a ‘never mind, I didn’t really mean this whole going together thing’. I was so torn up at this rejection, I ran into my room, threw myself on my bed and cried until my eyes burned. My mom came in my room to drop off some laundry and without even looking up from the basket calmly asked me what was up. I froze. I was not supposed to having anything to do with boys. My mom, a single mom, with four daughters, was a born again Christian. We went to church. Often. I went to the original Word of Faith and was baptized by 
Robert Tilton himself. Very, very into all of that. Speaking in tongues, healing of the sick through faith and prayers. She went on to be an ordained minister. You get the point. I choked it out, an edited version of my heart getting broken. I wanted my mommy to hold me, comfort me and help me work through this pain. I should have known better, that’s not who my mom was. What I got was a disapproving, “You knew you weren’t supposed to have a boyfriend. You sinned and this is what happens when you sin.” And she left with the empty laundry basket. Ouch.
You know what I learned from that experience? Don’t let my mom in on anything, at all costs. Because in the world I grew up in, everything was a sin. (I have never said the word ‘god@!$*’ out loud in my life because it was the fast track to hell, guaranteed.)
My little girl is eight but I see she is like me as a little girl. The drama is starting, but it isn’t bad. (I know drama, I created alot of it myself for badly needed attention.) Yet. She is so passionate about whatever she is into - art, Little House on the Prairie books, her beloved Webkinz. I can see where that will go when she begins to experience more mature relationships. She will have friends and boyfriends and broken hearts. I think it is much harder these days for tweens/teens. There is a different level of pressure with the influence of the internet and crap on TV.
I have memories of how my mom was and the mental notes I made when I was a kid. What I would and wouldn’t do as a mom. I told myself I wouldn’t yell at my kids as much as my mom yelled at us (I don’t yell nearly as much but, yes, I still holler when I need to) and I promised myself I would ‘pooh-pooh’ my children’s emotions just because I had grown up and figured it all out. Why do we as adults dismiss the intense feelings of the young? Just because we have been through it and know these feeling fade? I wouldn’t trivialize it and tell them it will pass. I am remembering these promises I made to my kids so long before I ever had them.
She needs to have her drama to an extent so she can work through it, deal with it, work it out, and be done with it. It’s part of a valuable growing process that will serve her well later. And I want her to know she can come to me with it, and I will hold her, comfort her, and listen to her. I will take her seriously. So will her Daddy.
I don’t know what the teen years hold for us. But I am trying to be prepared. This is the first step. because I know what is coming. As Max mutters under his breath, at the age of 5 with a roll of his eyes:
“Drama, drama, drama.”
Out of the mouths of babes.
I saw a pattern. Just today.
The road to my love of fruit.
It started when I was in elementary school, in Texas. My mom was a high school educated single mom of four girls. Their wasn’t a lot of extra money for fancy fruits. We got waxy, bland red delicious apples sometimes. Apples that had been stored for a long time and shipped a long way – nothing exciting about them apples. Less often she would buy a bag of oranges, which had to be eaten outside. My mom said the smell made her sick. So, out we would go and eat it, sitting on our dilapidated old picnic table.
I can count on one hand how many times my mom brought home a watermelon. Like we’d won a fruit lottery, busting it open outside and the four of us fighting over it.
My family qualified for the free lunch/ breakfast program at school, so I never brown-bagged it. Whenever they would serve those canned peaches in syrup at lunchtime, I would ask anybody within my reach if they were gonna eat their peaches – no? – great can I have them? On the rare occasion they would serve pineapple chunks I was overjoyed, traveling up and down the long cafeteria tables when the teacher wasn’t looking to find anybody who wasn’t eating their pineapple and beg it off of them.
In 4th grade (1980) I started borrowing money from kids, fifty cents here and there. I would go to the grocery store across the street after 
school on my walk home and buy a small can of Dole pineapple. They were cheap. Go home and gobble it up. One girl in my class bragged how her dad had brought home a real, fresh pineapple and they ate it all up it was sooooo good. I was so jealous. At the store I would look at the real pineapples. They looked intimidating - like a lot of work to get at the good stuff inside.
Summer of 1982. I was 12. Between elementary and junior high school. It was finally my turn to spend a summer in Germany with my fathers parents, my Oma and Opa. (They bought me a ticket on Pan Am, remember them?) I was supposed to go the summer of 1981 but Opa had heart troubles, so I had to wait another long year. A summer away from the searing Texas heat and no air conditioner. Not in the budget for a single parent. Summers were miserably hot, my mom worked, and we didn’t do much but sit around a fan. There wasn’t money for camp. Summers before you had friends with cars or moms to drive you fun places were boring.
What an experience that summer was for me! I was doted on. I was paid attention. I met different children who were fun to play with regardless of the language barrier. I swam in the North Sea. Took trains. Learned some 
German. And I ate - well. Three beautiful meals a day. My Oma and Opa had a garden of vegetables, and wanted to know what kind of vegetables I liked. I didn’t know, so they served me their homegrown tomatoes with lunch. Yum! More please! They had me pick fresh leafy salad greens from the garden, on which they squeezed a fresh lemon, a sprinkle of sugar. Like candy to me. Yep, gimme more. They showed me berry bushes in their lush yard, currents! Eat all you want! Never even heard of currents until then. Took me for walks in the cool forest, picking wild raspberries. Also a first time fruit for me. Another fruit to love. Bought cherries (another first!) at a farmer’s market, and had pit-spitting contests with my Opa. He won. It was a rich summer in so many ways. What a priceless experience for me.
Going home at the end of August was a reality slap, back to the still-searing hot Texas and the beginning of junior high school, 7th grade.
My next big fruit moment came the summer of 1990. I was 20, waiting tables at Old Faithful Inn, in Yellowstone National Park. The employee cafeteria was serving cantaloupe , which I had never tried. But you are from Texas! Where cantaloupes are grown! I dunno why. the opportunity had never come up. Until now. Whoa, these were so good and sweet. Juicy. I couldn’t stop eating. I was leaving piles of rinds on my plate as I went back for more. Fellow employees were staring – amused.
Driving from Wyoming to Salt Lake City, Utah, August 1993. Bear Lake. Some of you are saying, ooooh, yeah, we know what she is talking about. Raspberries! This area around this huge lake is famous for its abundant, wild raspberries. 
Everybody has a roadside stand of raspberries. Raspberry shakes sold on every corner. Bear Lake Raspberry Festivals. It’s homey/hometown fun and the raspberries rock. I bought a tray (4 pints to a tray) and ate. And ate. While I drove, shoving raspberries in me. It’s a wonder I didn’t get a tummy ache.
Autumn 1996. My first real fall in New England. I moved here to be with Mr. NG, now my husband. When I said I wanted to go apple picking, there was a slight roll of his eyes. Kinda touristy. He grew up here so it was no big deal. But I wanted to go and Mr. NG said fine. We headed out west on route 117 and stopped at Bolton Orchards. My first apple I grabbed off of a tree was a Macoun. Never heard of it before. I couldn’t believe the sheer burst of flavors from this apple. If you have never had an apple you just picked off of a tree yourself, if you only know grocery store apples, you have never truly experienced an apple. Crispy, crunchy, cool, sweet, tart, like it was grown in honey. I tried explaining it to friends back home in Texas. The response I got was : it’s an apple. Big deal. It is! So many people have no clue what they are missing! From then on, during apple picking season, I usually eat fresh picked apples until my belly aches.
Now, when I pay $6.99 for a watermelon, the first thing I do when I get home is crack it open and taste it. If it’s lacking flavor or has a mushy, unappealing texture – I throw it in a bag and return it right away. Hey, that’s $7 for a fruit, I want my money’s worth. At first the people at the return counter were surprised. After a few returns they told me that I didn’t have to keep bringing back the ‘bad’ melon – just go grab a good one and let us know. Thanks, that’s so much less messy.
Now that I have children, I offer them fruit all the time. I cut it up into perfect bite size pieces that just sing “eat me!” And they are so indifferent to it. It kills me when I present a freshly cut up summer watermelon like a gift for them to eat – only to get a sigh and “Watermelon? Again?” My son will then asked if he can have canned peaches instead.
Lord help me.
