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Tastes like chicken

12/27/2010 By Kellyn MacQuarrie 5 Comments

I began having contractions with my second son when I was only 34 weeks pregnant. I was put on bed rest, and had to visit the doctor frequently to make sure that the labor had slowed down. We were hopeful the baby would keep cooking for a few more days, if not weeks.

When you’re pregnant, you get weighed every time you go to the doctor’s office. I know, how cruel, right? It’s bad enough that I gained thirty pounds, but then I had to be reminded of it every time I went for an appointment. The doctor lured me in with fun things like ultrasounds and getting to hear the baby’s heartbeat – Ah! But not so fast. First, I had to step on the evil scale, whose number got bigger with each visit.

Because of this, I had my obstetrician visits down to a science. I always booked them first thing in the morning, I wore the lightest outfit possible, which was usually a summer dress (this outfit was seriously inconvenient in the winter months), and I didn’t eat or drink anything until the appointment was over. As you can imagine, by the time I would get out of the doctor’s office I was famished.

In fact, the further along I got in my pregnancies, the worse it was. Near the end, I started bringing a granola bar or some small snack that I could shove in my mouth as soon as the weigh-in was over.

On one particular day in the midst of my bed rest orders, I was running behind, so as I was walking out the door I decided to grab a muffin from my freezer. These were actually a unique kind of muffin, individually wrapped in clear plastic, and named Vita Tops, because they are just the top part of a muffin and therefore, kind of flat. In my haste, I didn’t really look, I just grabbed the muffin that appeared to be the banana bread flavor.

I tried to schedule my doctor’s visit early, but it ended up being around 10am, and since I had been awake since 7:30, I was pretty hungry by the time I finished. I raced out to the hallway, and as I waited for the elevator to arrive, I pulled out the muffin, tore open the plastic wrapper and took an enormous bite.

Hm.

Something…about this muffin…seems….off.

I pulled my hand back for a closer look. Turns out, in my haste, I hadn’t grabbed the banana bread Vita Top. Instead, I had grabbed an individually wrapped frozen breaded chicken patty. YUM!

Or not. And while it had somewhat thawed, it was still pretty frozen in the middle. Oh, and it tasted nothing like a banana bread muffin. And it was absolutely disgusting.

I was horrified! I spit out the bite I had taken and threw the rest in the garbage can. Sure, there were some people sitting nearby giving me raised eyebrows, but pregnancy allows you the wonderful excuse of deciding that any food, on a moment’s notice, can make you want to vomit until you dry-heave.

In hindsight, maybe I should have embraced the silver lining in that situation, and gone back to have the nurse re-weigh me after my little muffin mix-up.

Filed Under: Humor, MISC, Parenting

Wonderful

12/24/2010 By Kellyn MacQuarrie 4 Comments

My mom’s favorite song is “What A Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong. She’s loved it for as long as I can remember, and a few years ago I bought her a photo frame that plays a portion of the song when you press a button. Whenever we’re at her house, my kids love to play with that picture frame, particularly my two-year-old son, Jacob. He loves music, always has. Before he got the hang of talking, he figured out how to sing. His most favorite toys are the musical ones.

I watched him the other day, as he was playing one of his toy pianos – and I say playing, because rather than most toddlers who would probably pound on it, he is very delicate and precise in the keys he presses, as though he is actually playing a piano. While I was watching him playing and singing, I remembered something I read once that said people who are musically inclined tend to be very good in mathematics as well.

I was never good in math; I hated it in fact. I took the bare minimum required of me in school, and nothing more.  But while I was watching my son, I suddenly had this thought: my children are going to learn things I have never understood.

Just like Louis Armstrong’s song says, “I hear babies cry/I watch them grow/They’ll learn so much more/Than I’ll ever know”. In all the times I have listened to that song, I never really thought about that verse, not until that moment, when it truly took on meaning for me. My children are going to understand things in school that I never grasped, and as they get older they will learn things that I probably won’t get (especially if it is related to technology). After I am gone, they will experience things that I will never even know of.

And, it made me smile. Is there anything better than knowing that your children will see and learn and do more than you did? I am already proud of their accomplishments, and they are just toddlers, I can’t imagine how I will feel when they are teenagers performing in piano recitals, trying to explain their latest science experiment to me, scoring touchdowns for the football team, or attempting to teach me how to use the latest technological gadget from Apple.

I am excited for their futures; I am excited to see what they will become. What a wonderful thing. What a wonderful world.

Photo is property of the author.

Armstrong, Louis. “What a Wonderful World.” What a Wonderful World Single. Memory Lane Music Group, Carlin Music Corp., and Bug Music, Inc., 1968.

Filed Under: Parenting

Letters

11/29/2010 By Kellyn MacQuarrie 6 Comments

In the winter of 1991 my dad went to the FBI Academy for three months. That was the longest he was ever away from home, and it was very difficult on my mom, my brother and me.

We had little contact with him while he was away. In 1991 there was no internet, so no email obviously, and we didn’t have cell phones. My parents couldn’t afford to pay the costs of long-distance phone calls, (we lived in Washington state while he was in Washington, D.C.), so they only talked once a week by phone. Other than that, their only means of communicating was through snail mail. They wrote letters to each other, back and forth. A few months ago I was going through a closet in their house looking for photographs and I came across a large manila envelope, stuffed full. On the outside it read, “Letters to Tom at FBI Academy”. It made me smile, knowing that they saved them. What a treasure they have.

Even though that was only a short 19 years ago, it may as well have been decades. Communication is so vastly different now, it’s impossible to overstate how much things have changed.

My husband is currently deployed with the Navy. We “talk” through email multiple times a day. I send him pictures and videos of our children. Even though he is thousands of miles away, he is able to see what our children are doing mere minutes after they do it. Whenever his ship pulls into port – anywhere in the world – we are able to talk to each other on our cell phones, and a couple weeks ago I got to experience the joy of video chatting with him.

Communication these days is lightning speed, and it is truly a blessing. It keeps us connected, even when we can’t physically be together.

Still, I can’t help but feel a little sadness over the lack of snail mail. I would give anything for my husband to hand-write me a long letter that I could hold and keep close to me; knowing that he touched it at one point.

I am grateful for every email I get, but email spoils us. I get long emails from him here and there, but most of our emails are quick snippets from our day. He’ll write simply to say hi and complain that his favorite football team – the Redskins – lost, and I’ll email to tell him that I just put our oldest son in time out.

I have saved every email we’ve ever exchanged, but it’s not the same as real letters. What am I supposed to do, print off hundreds of pages of emails? Even though the words and the conversations within those emails are special to me, it’s just not the same.

We live in a world where we are updated by the second. While I long for the personal touch of an actual letter, I also lack the patience to wait the weeks it would take to get one.  In my three years as a Navy wife, I just haven’t found a way for snail mail to fit into this lifestyle; it’s an outdated tool that has been replaced by fancier and faster technology.

I’m afraid that it is a custom that is becoming irrelevant with all the advancements we’ve made. Still, for me, there will always be magic in receiving a hand-written letter, and maybe the fact that it is such a rare practice is what makes it that much more special. My parents may have had to wait several days before they would get their letters from each other, but I’m sure that after all these years, they wouldn’t trade those precious mementos for any email or phone call.

Photo by Luigi Diamanti for freedigitalphotos.net

Filed Under: Nostalgia, Tech

Progress

11/05/2010 By Kellyn MacQuarrie 3 Comments

My weight is something I’ve always been aware of; I often felt large next to my friends. While most of them were sizes two and four, I was always somewhere between a size 10 or size 12.

When I went off to college, I gained more than the average “Freshman Fifteen”, and my second year of college was no different. I spent the following summer at college, taking summer classes and working two jobs. It was a crazy, stressful three months. My boyfriend left for Iraq, my courses were much more intense than I had expected, and between my two jobs I never got enough sleep. By August, I had probably gained an additional 10 pounds, at least.

While home for one week before fall classes started, I asked my mom if she and my dad would be willing to help me pay to join a diet program.

I really applied myself to the weight-loss program, and by the first week in March 2005, I had lost nearly 30 pounds. I had never felt more confident or happy with my body.

Then it all fell apart.

I was off the wagon, and hard as I tried, I just couldn’t get it together. I was terrified of putting the weight back on; I had only just reached my goal.

I began making myself throw up mid-March. Whenever I would eat something that wasn’t on my diet plan I would gag myself until it was gone.

Sure, I knew better. I had written a paper on eating disorders in high school, but to me – a desperate dieter who felt that my weight was directly related to my value as a person – it seemed like the quickest fix.

Two weeks later, on my 21st birthday, I remember sitting on the floor of my apartment bathroom, having just thrown up my dinner. I was thinking how pathetic it was, making myself sick, on what should have been a really fun day. And it finally hit me, just how stupid my actions were.

I never did it again.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get my eating habits in order, and over the next 13 months, between the combination of being unemployed, moving back home to no friends, no boyfriend – no life, really, I managed to gain 60 pounds.

60 pounds. It is terrifying admitting to that.

Since then, I have lost some of that weight, although it is still a constant struggle for me. I go up and down all the time. If I had a dollar for every diet I have tried, and every prayer I have prayed, asking for some semblance of self-discipline, I would be a rich gal.

Thankfully, as I have gotten older, I have learned that my self-worth has nothing to do with how much I weigh. I have also developed a greater appreciation of my body as a whole, and its many capabilities – the most notable of which is giving birth to my two sons.

I have the love of a wonderful husband, who is proud of me and wants me, regardless if I am a size six or a size 16. And I have two amazing sons who find just as much worth in me as their mom, no matter how my weight may fluctuate.

Still, I hope to someday be satisfied with that number on the scale. I guess I am just a work in progress.

Filed Under: Motivate

Full circle

10/25/2010 By Kellyn MacQuarrie 3 Comments

I’m a realist.

So when my dad asked me, at the age of 13, what kind of car I would want when I got my driver’s license, I told him I would probably want to get a minivan.

He stared at me.

“You want a what?”

I explained I would need a minivan, because I knew that eventually I would have kids, and what is the most practical car for a stay-at-home mom to have? A minivan, of course.

He laughed and shook his head, and said that I wouldn’t need to worry about getting a minivan for a few years. I couldn’t think of any other car that would be more reasonable, so the conversation ended.

When I turned 16 and had my license, I ended up getting a Chevy Cavalier. It was no sports car, but it suited me.  Over the next several years I would also drive a Toyota Camry and then a two-door Honda Civic. The Civic was my baby. I loved speeding around in that sporty little car.

At that time, I wasn’t dreaming about how I would fit a car seat in it; instead, that car was meant to shuttle my friends and myself to and from nightclubs and house parties. It was made for crazy, last minute road trips to random towns where we didn’t have any other clothes to wear, or hotel reservations. It was the perfect size for a shopping trip to the mall, where I could blow my entire paycheck on bras from Victoria’s Secret or a whole bunch of stuff at Target, and it all fit perfectly in the back seat.

A few more years went by, I got married and we had two sons. By then we were in a Honda CR-V, which was a step up from the Civic in size, but even still, I was beginning to feel cramped. With both the kids in their car seats, my husband and I in the front, and a double stroller squeezed into the very back compartment, little room was left for anything else such as groceries, toys, extra diapers or bottles.

I began to think about getting something a little larger. My sights were set on mid size and regular SUV’s.

I had gone to a few dealerships looking around, when one salesman said to me, “You know, you might think about getting a minivan”.

I think I threw up a little in my mouth.

A minivan? I don’t think so. Don’t even bother showing me one, I am so not interested.

But, strangely enough, that one suggestion got the wheels turning in my head.

That evening I went home and began researching minivans, you know, just out of curiosity. And within a couple hours, I was 100% TEAM MINIVAN.

I hardly recognized my voice when I called my dad and told him that first thing in the morning I wanted to start shopping for one.

The next day, I found the perfect van for us: a 2006 Toyota Sienna, right in our price range, slightly used so that I wouldn’t freak the first time one of my boys spilled something in it, more than enough room for all of our needs, plus, it drove like a car.

In less than 24 hours I pretty much became the minivan’s biggest fan. Sure, I get a few laughs for driving one, but I honestly love it.

See, dad? I really did know what I was talking about at 13.

Filed Under: Parenting

Bullying is not the issue

10/15/2010 By Kellyn MacQuarrie 35 Comments

Lately it seems that you can’t turn on the news without hearing about yet another case of bullying that led to the needless death of a teen.

Every media outlet – from television news shows, to magazines to Facebook groups – are trying to rise up against the bullying and stop it before any more lives are lost.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the loss of these lives is very saddening. My heart breaks for their families and friends. However, I think that this is another case of the media sensationalizing an issue unnecessarily.

Bullying and mean people have been around since the beginning of time, and they aren’t going anywhere. I don’t know one person who hasn’t been on the receiving end of teasing at some point in their life. My mom grew up in the 1960’s, and she was teased relentlessly for being overweight as a kid. I was teased in middle school because I was an awkward, braces-wearing tween who never wore the “cool” clothes. My brother was teased all through elementary school for having big ears. Many of my friends were teased for one reason or another. The point is, I think most of us have been there, have been belittled and hurt by the cruel words of our peers.

And yet, we are all still here. We didn’t kill ourselves because of it. In fact, I would go so far as to say I think it has made us stronger.

By never being popular, or fitting in, I developed a stronger sense of self early on. I knew who I was, and I liked myself. I didn’t need the approval of others, and while it stung at the time, I learned to let the unkind words and actions of others roll off my back.

In my opinion, the media is focusing on the wrong issue here. Bullying is nothing new. The question should be why are these kids feeling that their only option is to take their lives? Where are their families when the kid is suffering? Where are the school counselors?  Where are the teachers? Why aren’t they taking action when they see this negative behavior happening, or at least responding to it once they receive complaints?

I know that whenever I had problems as a youth, I could always turn to my parents for help, comfort; support. Aside from them, I also trusted my friends’ parents, as well as teachers at school and my church pastor. All of these people showed me love and kindness, and taught me that I was okay, just the way I was; and that what truly matters is what’s in my heart and character.

I knew that I was not alone in this world, and I don’t believe anyone is. There is always someplace that one can go; you just might have to do a little searching.

I don’t understand why these teens felt that suicide was their best option, and sadly, we will never know how they reasoned that end for themselves. We will also never know what potential they could have reached, or what fulfilling lives they could have lived.

Instead of doing in-depth investigations on teasing or who these bullies are, why don’t we instead seek to give the struggling kids support by strengthening them, and letting them know they are never alone. They need to know that tomorrow will be better, and they should be here to see it.

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Filed Under: Opinion