Andrea Answers

You get what you’ve always gotten.  This quote can be a direct reflection of my life.  Last Wednesday, I completely lost my temper with Aiden and spanked him more than I intended. Truth be told I never intended to spank him because I hate the idea of hitting. But I lost it and after it was done nothing was accomplished.  The incident took place before a gymnastics meet and I spent the rest of the evening disappointed in myself. Friends of mine, who don’t have children, kept telling me to get over it. Over and over I heard how they were spanked and they are fine. Well in my mind, there are direct problems with this thought. Aren’t we supposed to do better? Just because something was done a certain way doesn’t mean it is the right way. If that were the case and that type of thinking was acceptable, progress would never have been made. I firmly believe that we are supposed to use discipline as a tool to teach and not to dominate our children. How did I come out ahead by scaring my child? I proved to him that I was stronger and bigger. Nothing was learned or accomplished from this situation. I am sure there are a million people out there who would love to tell me how wrong I am. Please don’t. I have had two days to think about this and my mind is made up. There are more effective ways to look at punishment and I fully intend to exercise those ways.

This past week I spent some time with my mom and grandma. Of course, memories come up and without guiding them there often times we can remember the bad choices a person makes. The person in question is my grandfather. He has been gone for 13 years now. Bringing my children to visit my grandma only seems exacerbate the fact that he is gone. He died very young and missed out on weddings, college graduations, high school graduations and new babies. I know my grandfather was not a perfect man but when someone passes on they slowly move to a pedestal. I have such a hard time listening to anything negative my grandma might share. I know this isn’t only true for our loved ones who have passed. We all have those people in our lives that we don’t really see as humans and God forbid they should disappoint us. My sister and I have put our dad up there. This is why it makes it so hard that he left me at ballet once for an extra three hours and my poor sister almost had to walk home from gymnastics…she was five. Tell me, who have you put up there?

Dear Andrea,

My boyfriend of two months is completely jealous of my past. What’s the deal? Is this a red flag? Should I be apologetic of my past?

Sincerely,

A chick with a past…

Wow, we need to apologize for things we have done before we met someone? Unless you were involved in a criminal act against him or his family members, it seems ridiculous.  I would think it was a red flag if he were following you around in his spare time and constantly checking your cell phone. Otherwise he is just being annoying. He needs to get over your past and you need to stop talking about your past because it is well, the past. 

Its been a long and arduous winter. March is here, I am six months pregnant. Which by the way, makes me incredibly nervous to speak of being pregnant online. I have fear of someone coming after me and trying to take my baby. To combat this, I am laying low online about the pregnancy and I keep a dog with me a lot. I have three of them so it isn’t too hard.  In fact if I were not pregnant and married, I would probably be the crazy dog lady. Actually, I might already be there. Even though my blogging skills on this sight have been lax, I have a lot of my own questions running through my head on parenting. Recently, my children have begun to try every nerve in my body. The constant twitching is par for the coarse now.  Obviously, this does not stop me from giving advice about parenting to my friends. Because well, I am completely an expert. In reality we are all flying blind trying to figure out how to raise this next generation of children. So in terms of discipline we are trying to stop a behavior while teaching them a lesson. I guess my question is what works? What’s the currency we use to entice our children on how to do the right thing, while teaching them a lesson? Better yet, what is the lesson?  I feel like many teenagers now  are missing the point of doing the right just for the sake of doing to right thing. How do we prevent this from happening with our children?

So I am pregnant and finding things are a little different this time around. When I was expecting my first two I put up the ultra-sound pictures and did not mind spilling my guts all over the place about the baby. Here is what I found; when you spill your guts too much you have nothing left inside to run on. This time around I don’t want the pictures up, I don’t want to know the sex, and I don’t want to discuss names with anyone. I have found all sorts of widgets I can put on my various pages discussing the baby, showing the baby in his or her growth stage. Not of that appeals to me anymore. Half of me is terrified someone will stalk me for my baby and the other half wants to just keep the information to myself. I’m wondering if this is a third child syndrome or a mental breakdown I am going through. Do you think too much information is being shared now about our children? Is there a line we should draw before putting all this information out there?

Why do young teenagers insist on wearing thick black eyeliner? Chances are if you visit a middle school you will run into dozens of young Avril Lavigne lookalikes. One of my closest friend’s daughter loves to do this. If you give her a an inch she will paint of mile of black eyeliner around her eyes. The real kicker? She looks amazing without the eye liner and yet she prefers it. I think it must be the idea of hiding who they are under who they really want to be. That must be it. When I was 13 I tried so hard to make my hair look like everyone elses. I really did. Here is an example:

I had no business having bangs, and yet there you go right in the middle of my head. Bangs curled in obscene directions.� By the way I am not the one in the lime green sweatshirt. That is Karen and she also had silly bangs. I think she wore black eyeliner and black tennis shoes. We all had to look exactly alike, if you were different you had nothing to hide behind. And lord knows you can hide anything behind black shoes. Tell me, what trends do you think teenagers are using to hide behind? Is anyone at this age really accepting with being an individual? I realize that the era of Myspace pages claims to recognize individuality but honestly do teenagers really accept this?

Two weeks ago I cleaned out my closet, which was a six hour ordeal. My closet is something to behold and quite possibly be ashamed of. Before you minimalists start shaking your clear coated nails at me…I did donated four garbage bags of clothes. As a former resident of Michigan I am used to clearly defined seasons, which does not always happen in Maryland. It usually goes something like wearing sandals from May until the middle of October and then suddenly pulling out those winter boots. Granted a very nice mild winter. As a result I have never changed the clothes in my closet from season to season. What I have is out all the time. Ok, I do have some space for it but not a ton. Having plenty of friends who change their closets every season I was more than interested to read an article about seasonless dressing…http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3041049.ece. So my question to you all is how many of you rotate your clothes? How many like the idea of being able to wear everything you have all the time? Or is it a great surprise to pull out those clothes you haven’t seen in awhile? I also have a challenge to you all; grab a friend, pull them into your closet and have them help you weed out all those close you never wear. Make sure you grab someone tougher than you are because letting go of those clothes can be like losing a limb. A friend of mine also suggest turning all your hangers in one direction and them turning them back as you wear a piece of clothing. Anything you did not wear during the year needs to go. Alright get to it.

Dear Andrea,

For years I have aimlessly “dated” guys of questionable behavior which led to my own questionable behavior. I am trying to change, I really am. Now I have met someone I am completely crazy about. He is smart, funny, and seems to like being seen with my in public. The catch? A guy I casually date when he comes to town is coming here this weekend and I have plans with him that we made months ago. I am so afraid I am going to misbehave if I keep those plans with him. What should I do? Make up a story? Go?

Help!

Miss confused….

Dear Miss confused,

You should tell him your grandmother is in town and has one week left to live� After that she is going to have experimental surgery� But in order for this lie to work you really need to start talking about the surgery to everyone that knows the both of you. Make sure you have all your chickens in a row so you won’t get caught and defiantly include medical terms and furrow your eye brows while doing so. You might even get a few sympathy cards from people. Not what you were looking for? Oh well, tell him the truth. I know the truth is a pain and you could hurt his feelings but you won’t look like a dumb a#* if you get caught in a lie. And really, there is something horrible about lying about your grandma. So tell him you have finally met someone you really like and you are terrified that you could screw it up if you are back to your old behaviors.

Most of my days are spent with young children or teenagers. I absolutely love both age groups because they are so similar which includes their ridiculous sayings and constant mood swings. My teens usually keep me updated on all the latest trends. Hey, thats why I love Myspace. I recommend to all parents that they create a Myspace page and then make sure they are on their child’s friend page. If they don’t add you, make sure they delete their account. The amount of info on Myspace is amazing. Plus, they tend to forget they have you as a friend and then you are so on top of the naughty behaviors. I am not ashamed to spy on my high school gymnasts and then turn them into their parents when I read or see questionable material.

The current or maybe not so current slang term is “hot mess”. Used as: “That girl that just walked in is a hot mess, she has stains all over her clothes and her hair is a mess”. The only hot mess I know about is the one my German Shepherd puppy makes on my floor. Literally you are calling someone a stinky pile of grossness. Stop. Seriously, Stop. It sounds inane.

I have been having some problems sleeping last night. A mature way to handle this situation would be to do some stretches, take a warm bath, and then meditate. Instead I chose to think about everything in life that bothers me. Including the annoying things I do and or say. The first is when some explains how they have turned their life around by saying they have done a complete 360. I am horrible at math but wouldn’t you be back to where you started? In reality you haven’t done a damn thing. Basically you are telling someone you have worked really hard to not get anywhere. I think i’ll start telling people I have done a 45, changed enough but not so much that I had to work really hard.

Growing up I used to love to buy things with the Guess logo, fortunately my mom didn’t buy us a lot of crap like that. You were seriously “in” when you wore shirts and sweatshirts with a logo on them from an “in” brand. It never occurred to me how ridiculous this is until my friends father pointed out that I was paying to advertise for the company. Now wearing American Eagle, Hollister, and Abercrombie is the complete obsession for teenagers. I can remember begging for a pair of $40 jeans and that is a drop in the bucket now. The big difference now? Girls are paying to advertise for these companies by wearing the logos on their booties. Seriously? I am going to give you money so I can wear your name on my ass?
Annoying thing number three, how I start sentencing out by saying “I’m not going to lie…” I can’t stop myself from doing this. Here is an example, “I’m not going to lie, that is the funniest movie ever”. Why in the hell would I lie about that. Annoying.

You would think that this type of thinking would keep me up at night…nope. I feel asleep rather quickly, well after I made my list.