I heard something this morning and it stuck.  The pastor of the church I attended today was talking about Triple A relationships.  He used this in somewhat of a different context, but it did make me think about the relationships in my life and if they were Triple A?  The Triple A is Authentic, Affirming and Available.

I have a lot of acquaintances, a handful of great friends and one or two best friends.  But this is an interesting question to pose, when thinking about the relationships in your life.  And at certain passes in your life, do you evaluate these relationships?  I always think people will be in my life forever.  I hate things to end.  I hate things to change.  But you know what?  They do.  And every time they do, I am extremely disappointed.  I try to enter every relationship by being completely authentic, affirming my friends that they are the best and being available-emotionally, mentally, and physically available to make the most of these relationships.

I just wish everyone went into friendships, partnerships, and relationships with this in mind.  But I’m not that naive to know, that some people aren’t authentic, will never affirm you and will never make themselves available.  Such is life, I guess.  But from now on, I will start to have much more of a keen eye for authenticity, but will still carry the belief that people are inherently good.

Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.” - Mother Theresa

What can you say about Boulder, Colorado…so many things actually…and here are a few of my favorite things…(yes, read to the Sound of Music..but think about the Gimme Gimmes doing the cover…you know to spice it up a bit!)

People on Pearl Street and real live musicians
Cool tech meetups without an admission
Tee and Cakes boxes tied up with string
These are a few of my favorite things

Pink pretty ponies and fun kids at Metzger
Finding Doyle Albee at The B Side with Fetzer
Social media experts that fly with clients on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things

Gwen Bell at the Cup and Dave Taylor at Starbucks
Live streaming weddings and tweeting amok
Snowboard winters that melt into springs
These are a few of my favorite things

When Micah bites
And his posts sting
When I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad!

Ok, while I’m ranting this week…let me continue with one more topic, then I will return to Jackson’s funny antics…

I, among hundreds of thousands of women, tuned into the final episode of the Bachelor last night.  I didn’t watch the whole series…but I thought I’d tune into the final episode…kinda like March Madness, it’s a long season people, give me the highlights!

Let me just start by saying, I think the whole process is stupid and rather degrading and humiliating to women.  Yes, yes, I know they have the Bachlorette too…equally humiliating and degrading if you ask me.  Why in God’s name would you sign up to be on this show???  So, the premise, as you know, is to be one of 25 women that will vie for one man’s attention, love and ultimately, his hand in marriage.

THIS IS RETARDED PEOPLE.

It reminds me of being back in junior high, ok, I don’t know about you, but I was pretty awkward and not remotely attractive.  We would stand in the gym, in our God awful gym clothes, yes, my school chose a one-piece zip up number, red polyester shorts with a red and white striped top…did I mention it was one piece?  Yeah, my ass looked fantastic! Anyway…we would line up to get “chosen” to play dodgeball or whatever the stupid game was for the hour and inevitably there would be that one person left standing…ok fine, I’ll take em.  YUCK people!  This has done nothing for our self esteem over the years.  Yet, here we are again, with a national TV show that makes women stand in a line to “get picked” to hang out with this douchebag!  Ok, he may be an alright guy, whatever, I don’t know him.

If you watched last night, he also subjected his 3 yr old son to the “choosing” process!  In a nutshell, he says, hey honey, I chose Melissa, she is great and she’ll swim with her dress on and we’ll be one big happy family, love her Ty, make her your new Mommy and then like a fly in a bug zapper, this Jason character says…uh, shit, I’m a douchebag and I don’t “feel it” gonna break up with her and pick up my plan B girl…who, by the way, is more than happy to go, ok, sweet, I’ll hang out with you, even though you humiliated me on National TV and you didn’t “choose” me! That’s a huge WTF?  But the bigger WTF, is now, he says, hey Ty, wet Melissa didn’t exactly work out….but now you should love Molly, she’s going to be your new Mommy!  Jesus, this kid is 3-what do you think is going through his head????  AND where is his birth mother and WHY doesn’t she object to him being on National TV to be used “as the cute puppy lure”, I know I would.

So all I’m saying is, I’m fairly “new” to this dating in the Millenium thing, maybe I don’t get it, clearly, I don’t get it.   I will never join a dating site, because all that equates to is standing in a cyber line, saying pick me, pick me!  I don’t want the rose or the douchebag, I especially don’t want to be humiliated…I can do that all by myself-remember, I did wear a one-piece polyester gym outfit.

Keep your rose, keep your douchebag, I think I’ll try it the old-fashion way of actually meeting someone face to face without a load of sorority sisters on my date.  I know…total troglodyte!

“Don’t say that you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Theresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.” — H. Jackson Brown, JR.

This is going to be a rant…so if you’re not in the mood, then I suggest you opt out of reading this post.

I have to say, I am sick to death of people telling me, “they are soooo busy”, ” I have no time”, you know what that says to me?  It says, I have no time for YOU.  I have absolutely zero seconds proportioned, to take 5 of them, to send you a note, a text, a tweet whatever it the form of communication maybe, for you, because you aren’t important to me.  We live in a world of technology that moves so fast, there are no excuses in my mind.

We all have a million things happening in our lives…that is our generation, the never sit still, take downtime or breathe generation.  I have a million things happening in my life too, I am a mother of a very busy 8 year old, I have a full-time job that happens to be a 45 minute commute each way, I sit on two charity boards, and volunteer at my kid’s school.  Plus I have a house to keep, a dog to take care of…oh the dog…all the daily bullshit we have to take care of AND, I do it all by myself.  I’m not looking for an award, I’m just saying, I make the time in my day, to tell people I care about them.  To write a note, send a b-day card, and wait for it…gasp…call them and actually have a conversation.

I will always have 5 minutes for a friend, for someone I care about, for the one’s I love.  And you know what, I will also, always, have a night to go to dinner or an afternoon to walk in the park.  Because these are the memories, the moments, that make my life complete.  Spending time with people, because that’s what shapes me and my character.  I will never look back on my life and smile about the countless hours I spent working, or doing laundry, but I will look back and reflect upon the people in my life, the conversations I had and the experiences I created.

Women are inherently multi-taskers, it’s what we do…I can talk on the phone, empty the dishwasher, paint my toe nails, check my kids homework, all while throwing the tennis ball to my dog.  I can also be the best at what I do, in about 30 hours a week, some weeks more, of course.  I’m not a MENSA candidate by any stretch, but what the hell are these people doing all day long, that they have no time?  It’s just a big fucking mystery to me!

So, the next time you say to someone, I am too busy, think about that…Are you saying, hey screw you, you aren’t worth it?  Or do you think you could see time as being relative…and MAKE time for someone or something that matters to you?

Jackson turned 8 on February 7.  I really can’t believe that he is 8, seems like just yesterday I was sitting in the NICU of Sunrise hospital in Las Vegas, NV, praying that my 4lb baby, would see and hear and breathe and….live.  It’s amazing how God protects you in situations like that, situations that could be absolutely terrifying.  I had no idea, yeah, don’t judge me, but truly, I had no idea the complications that could arise from having a baby 2 months early.  I just figured, hey, I’m impatient, so is he, let’s get this show on the road.  He must be “cooked” enough…on with it!

Our lives are busy, at 31, I was on top of the world, traveling the world, booking business left and right, no end in sight.  As I was running through a hotel to meet a client in the busiest time of my industry, a man turned to me and said, you shouldn’t be running with a baby inside of you, slow down and take a breath.  I smiled as always, said, hey thanks mister and kept on running…My client greeted me with an OMG you look like shit greeting.  Thanks, one eyebrow raised?  She said, you have it all under control, go home and get off your feet.  No way, not gonna do it…because I was the BEST.  That night in a sheer panic, Chris drove pensively to the ER, where I would remain on bed rest for the next 3 weeks. Let it be known, I hate Drs., I will not under most circumstances, go to the Dr. unless my brains are coming out of my head…but I was greeted by an Angel, truly the sweetest nurse ever.  She took great care of me, assured me that being upside down on my head for 5 days was going to be REALLY fun.  It sucked, but she was still, really sweet!

The morning, Feb 6, 2001,  I begged and pleaded with my darling South African Dr to let me get out of bed and take a shower…he finally relented and said in his sexy accent (hey, I’ve been couped up in this shitty hospital for 2 weeks and 6 days, I’m allowed to think he is sexy!) shower…bed…that’s it.  Ok, I took a shower, you have no idea how great it was…then got back in bed, but I did figure out how to McGuyver the hairdryer from the bathroom to the bed so I could dry my hair-straight!  If not, I’m tellin’ you, it’s not pretty.  Approximately 12 hrs later, and two months early, I gave birth, but by God my hair looked damn good.  I didn’t get to see Jackson for a lot of hours.  When they finally showed him to me, I was so drugged up and exhausted that they could have handed me a guinea pig, I had no idea what had just happened.  And had no idea what was going to happen…

Five weeks of sitting in a NICU is a hell of a long time.  Back and forth from the house, everyday and every night, I almost can’t remember it, except for feeling really robotic.  I have a certain empathy for all kinds of mothers.  I have to say, about the worst feeling in the world, is leaving a hospital without your baby and leaving your baby in a incubator with people you don’t know, yeah their nurses, but truly, you don’t know them. And going home to try and sleep, but really tossing all night to return in the morning with baited breath, praying that he is still ok.   We had an interesting 5 weeks, Jax and I were front page of the Las Vegas Sun, starring in an article about preemies and mother’s who smoked!  Yeah, apparantely still drugged when I agreed to that.  We witnessed so many things and people and stories…although Sunrise Hospital has one of the best NICU’s in the country, it is still a seedy hospital that is a block off the strip.  Not ideal.  While we were there, babies died and we mourned w/ the parents, babies lost their breath and their eyesight and hearing…it was a tramatic five weeks.  But our little dude, he did just fine.

And amazingly, 8 years later, he is healthy, happy, smart, talented, athletic and you would never know he was a preemie.  But before he was even here and then when he arrived, all 4 lbs of him, shaped me into the person I am today.  Eight years of teaching me, to slow down, breathe…and appreciate how God protects us from situations that can be absolutely terrifying.  He might be the same angel that was in my hospital room, day and night for 3 weeks, except when his horns poke out and then I know….he is mine…and I love him all the same!

Do you know what it feels like to lose something?  Something that is really important, something that makes your heart full, puts a smile on your face, something that quite possibly has influenced your life for a decade?  It feels awful.  Whether it is right or wrong, whether you choose it or someone else chooses it for you, it just simply hurts.  Life goes on, the sun still comes up and yet, here you are faced with a major feeling of disorientation.  Because now you are not part of “something” anymore, your team has been disenfranchised, your show has ended, your band-well it broke up.

I think the part that is truly the hardest, is swallowing your pride to admit that you lost.  But, the other part is that you just didn’t have what it took to close the other person, you couldn’t make the sale and convince them that you were worth it, that you were part of the reason that the sun came up everyday.

So you are left to put the pieces back together, to start over or do you think that when you get to the fork you just veer?  Or do you think you have to go back to the place you started.  I suppose you’ve come too far to ever go back.  The journey before you might be more exciting than the one behind you, but you have to forge that journey and to do that, I suppose, you have to get out of bed.

Here’s another question, why is it that people act like they have no idea how this feels?  Wouldn’t you just simply think of the person you love the most-stomping on your heart, slapping you in the face and slamming the door?  How can you not be empathetic, is just seems callous, really.

As a woman, that is constantly striving for the best, trying to be successful, planting her feet on the ground, so her child see’s stability, and keeping “it” (read: sanity) all together, yet, this still is not good enough, it will never be good enough because we will enter into another relationship of giving, always giving and never getting, never getting the one thing that would make all the difference in the world…love.

So without jumping up and down screaming pick me, pick me, I guess they will never know what they missed out on and you know what?  It was a lot.

No one really told me what I was getting into, when Jax announced that “he wanted to play hockey” sure, I thought, soccer was getting a bit boring and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my summer Saturday’s to wake up at 6:30am for swim team, so hockey, I thought, sure babe, you can play hockey!  If I could go back with a dog net and scoop up those words, toss them into the abyss, I would ever be so happy!

First of all, do you know the “gear” that is involved in this sport, WOW, let’s just say $400 later and 20 minutes to get a seven year old dressed to go out and run on ice is unbelievable.  Now that is just the half of it.  We get to the first couple of practices, holy crap these kids are GOOD!  Did the parents enroll them in hockey in the womb?  How do 7 year-olds skate that well?  Yeah, I’m just jealous, but I was still astounded!  Jax did very well, for never having any formalized skating lessons!  The kid just generally rocks!  Hopefully he will appreciate that later in life!

This brings me to the scheduling-REALLY- I am going to be at this rink 4 times a week?  And not 4 consistent time’s mind you, but it was explained to me that you don’t want to be the poor schmuck that gets stuck with the 5:30am ice time every Sat. morning.  OK, I guess!  At this point, I am seriously thankful I only have one child!  The other part of this whole charade, is you have to sit in the rink and “watch” your kid.  This would be great, except it’s like 20 below zero in there.  And this lasts until March!  My scarf collection is growing!

I would do ANYTHING for Jax-including helping him put on 15lbs of pads and tying skates to go run on ice with a stick in his hand chasing after a small puck that no one can ever see.  Although, I do recall, for the past seven years, telling him not to run with a stick in his hand…hmmm this could get complicated!

Three weeks into school, things are going well, routines getting established, days getting shorter, already scratching my head at what to pack for lunch everyday, but those are the perils of school days and I don’t mind it so much really.  It is very enlightening to hear what Jax has learned everyday and the facts that he spews at me, I am learning things all over again.  And truthfully, that’s not so bad.

Took a nice weekend to Grand Lake, just me and Jax and a handful of friends for a nice birthday celebration weekend for my BF.  Two other kids were there, and I have to say, two of the nicest, well-behaved, sweet, smart, beautiful kids I have ever been around.  Now, if you know me at all, that quite possibly, might be the nicest compliment I have ever given to anyone at anytime.  It was fun to watch them interact, three kids, two age 7, one age 5, now picture this, a whole weekend, no fighting, no crying, no whining, what?  Impossible you say?  I don’t lie!  I want to clone these kids.  Girl one:  Beautiful, sweet, engaging, I mean really just a dear.  Boy one (age 7), witty, creative, clever, leader, good qualities!  Boy two (age 5), CUTE, beyond cute, great follower, happy to be involved, funny, giggler-you see what I mean, great mix.  The adoration that was displayed between three young children, is something we could all learn from.  They smiled A LOT (happiness) , they took turns (respect), they found countless things to do without a TV (innovative), they hugged a lot (love) and they all shed a tear when it was time to leave (bonded).  So, I guess what I am getting at, is for starters, what a nice display of children, and secondly, I really wish all my relationships were like this.  Especially the one’s of utmost importance.  We, as parents, as spouses, especially, could all take a cue from these kiddos.  Respect, adoration, happiness, innovation and most importantly love.

Take time to hug the ones you love, to tell them how much they mean to you, to reflect that in your voice, to lift them up and make them feel like a hero and to live life in love-with yourself, your partner and your interactions.  Maybe, through the eyes and heart of a child.

I was awoken to my phone chiming at me at 6:58 a.m. no one really calls that early unless something is awry…I notice the number, big smile on face (yes, before coffee), dial back the number and hear yes, you are an auntie!!!!  YIPPEE!!!  Baby boy Tharan, now officially called Zackary Ryan Tharan, born on September 2, 2008 at 5:00am.  Here’s the thing, the family you GET to pick is sometimes so much better than the family that is bestowed upon you!  For starters you didn’t fight like hell over the bathroom growing up, you didn’t have to draw an imaginary line in the car on the roadtrip from hell…you get the point.  So although, I am a surrogate auntie, a proud auntie nonetheless!

Jax, also very excited about Baby T, is awaiting his visitation after school.  Zackary, you are one lucky dude to have Jax as your older friend, he has A LOT to teach you and share with you.  First things first, sleep.  Gotta sleep kid, lots to do during the day!  OK, I think he can wait at least a month to teach you the rest!

A lot of love in our lives right now, some lost, some gained, but love nonetheless and that’s a pretty good place to be.  Hey Zackary, you are in excellent hands, I couldn’t be happier with your pick of parents!

On the drive to school today, I noticed that Jax was being somewhat, hmm, shall we say, GRUMPY!  So, I braced myself, “babe, something wrong?” Nope, scowl.  Really?  Weeeeelllll, yes. Anything, tell me anything, just spit it out, because I don’t like grumpy at 7:45am without coffee. “Well you have been gone every night this week (it’s Tuesday), yes, I have.  Honey, (count to 10, deep breath) it is the Democratic National Convention, it is a once in a lifetime event that will take place in your city, history in the making, the first African-American nominee for President, 45 year anniversary of MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech-ding, we have a winner!  He hones in on MLK, eyebrow goes up-facts spew out…I know MLK, I know his speech, I studied all about that in 1st grade, we sang this song about it…. So that is why I have been gone.

Then it occured to me, he really should go down and see all the excitement.  So, this afternoon we headed on the lightrail to downtown to immerse ourselves in the scene.  Right off the light rail, a lady hears my husband and Jax talking about Biden, where he was from, if we were going to see him, etc.  She immediately walks over and is so jazzed that we would bring our kiddo downtown, that she showers him with chatchkies, buttons, pens, magnets, etc. Off to a good start for the history fieldtrip.  If you don’t know, kids love stuff, don’t really care what it is, as long as it’s stuff and it’s theirs!  Onto the Solar House, Electric Cars, Solar Ovens (big hit, they have cookies). Then down 16th street mall, cops on horses, protesters…awe we are losing him, time for ice cream.  Rebooted, Nancy Pelosi sighting on Larimer, swat team hanging off SUV’s (highlight).  Pictures with Barack (OK cardboard Barack, but Barack nonetheless).  All in all, great evening and I felt good that as a parent, regardless of my political views, that I exposed my child to the world, the world of politics, and the experience of a lifetime, truly!

Go Obama-We think you ROCK!