Running less than a marathon in the middle of a government shutdown

Big news; I was able to finish running 10 miles this week in a local run. It wasn’t easy, I almost dropped out because the humidity was so high I felt at times that I would not be able to finish. But like the other thousand participants, I kept going. At times, I sped up, and at times my jog was no faster than a stroll.

It was my third time in this race and the weather made the run extremely difficult. I felt buckets of perspiration pouring out as I ran, which has a huge psychological effect on you as well. I inched along and finally I finished, and it felt great. Painful, but great.

I guess the real big news this weekend wasn’t the race, but the government shut down. In fact, while I was running, I overheard a government employee discussing her paycheck or lack thereof. But the government has reopened and now it’s back to business as usual, right?

I don’t right about politics much, and as a reporter, I hate it when people bash the media, but I have been annoyed by the many headlines touting the Republican’s loss. It annoyed me because I think always framing political debates in terms of winners and losers hurts us in the long run. The criticism of making politics into some sort of sports competition is nothing new. In fact, this opinion was widely articulated in the last presidential election. But I would say when we use it to describe conflicts in Congress, it does even great damage. The incentive to compromise is lost because you don’t want to be the loser. Losers don’t win primary elections. In the game of politics there is no tie, only winners and losers. So the budget battles and debt ceiling are reduced to little games, replayed every couple of months.

Here’s my suggestion. If we have to use a sports analogy, why don’t we compare it to a marathon. In marathons there are no losers. I mean of course, it is a competition, and people do win. But for the majority of people, they are not running to win first place. People are running to reach their goal. For a select few, that is getting first. For some, it is beating their own personal best record and for others it is just finishing. Besides the most elite runners, if someone else reaches their goal, it does not mean I failed at reaching mine. 

PERFECTION AND PINTEREST

My imperfect photo of our vacation.
Not portfolio quality, but it brings back happy memories.

    I like Pinterest as much as the next person. It has a lot of good ideas and a lot of neat tricks. It has also introduced me to a lot of great blogs that I otherwise would not have discovered. But like so many other things in our culture, I also think it's partially successful because it preys on our insecurities.

   Pinterest  posts mostly fall in two broad categories. First are do it yourself pictures. These feature a lot of cute tricks, such a 101 uses of coconut oil. Common tags are along the lines of, "Why didn't I think of that?" or "I feel dumb not realizing this all this time." There are also a lot of homemade alternatives to store bought items, and the comments run along the same lines.

Now, while I appreciate saving money and making things homemade, I really don't have time to make board games at home and make all my furniture from refurbished items at a yard sale. Most of my toys are store bought as is my furniture.

Another type of picture found on Pinterest are pictures of people's dream homes, dream vacations, dream clothes, hair, and husbands. This type of visual exploitation is similar to ones found in a lot of advertising and catalog
s. The coffee commercial in the immaculate quiet house, the plain white dishes in a charming country home.

These graphics showcase a level of lifestyle perfection that is unrealistic as the airbrushed cover model we criticize so often.

I don't mean to pick on the site. I actually do like it a lot. But we have to constantly remind ourselves that we are being manipulated into wanting our lifestyle to be so unrealistically perfect. It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact. We can fight against this buy educating ourselves and our kids using on visual literacy.

Part of this is limiting what we are exposed to, such as tossing all those catalogs we get in the mail :) And part of it actively telling ourselves that the images we see are being used to get us to buy products.

When I started this blog (which I am so bad at updating), I want to focus on constant improvements in my life, but I think I was focusing too much getting to some unrealistic domestic utopia. I do want to make sure I raise healthy happy successful kids, but does doing that mean my house needs to be a manifestation of Mother Jones meets Southern Living? Probably not.

I am not throwing in the towel on my goals, but I am going to change how I approach these goals. My new approach is simplicity and contentment. And I'll try to share any tips I get on how to do that.

Eid Craft

     The summer has blown by, and though the blog is all about kaizen, I often feel very overwhelmed in life.

     For example, it’s Rammadan right now. I have a baby in the house that likes to fall asleep around midnight, and I’m fasting all day. A part of me is just trying to survive this month, while another part of me feels guilty for not engaging my kids in educational activities and crafts during the day, and spending some time every evening to pray and study religion.

     Instead, after the morning meal, suhoor, I sleep until about 10:30 or 11am, when the baby wakes up. In the meantime, my 5 year old has already woken up, brushed her teeth, changed and made her own breakfast of toast and Nutella. My nine year old gets out of bed around 11 or 11:30. I do manage before it’s time to break the fast in the evening to get them to read Quran and memorize a little. The baby’s schedule is way off, and he doesn’t fall asleep for the night until midnight or past. And as I write, all I see is a big stack of mail that needs to be organized. It’s 1:30 in the morning.

    On the bright side, I did find some time to get the kids to do a little pre-Eid craft. On a trip to Michaels, I found some letters that were 80% off. I already had the paint and glitter at home. The kids did all the painting and glittering themselves. I tied the ribbons around the letters (the ribbons were found on an old gift bag I found at home.)  I hung the letters up on hooks the previous home owners had installed on the mantle for Christmas stockings. My splurge was the Rammadan lights I found on Ranoon.com.

    It’s a simple craft, but it makes me smile when I look at it. The kids love plugging in the lights in the evening. I want to make Eid an exciting time for the kids. I think simple decorations help. Kaizen.

Compost

I’ve always wanted to start my own composting pile, but I’ve been a little intimidated. I had done a little research on my own and things like nitrogen/ carbon ratio made composted seem like something that was too complicated. Plus, I was overwhelmed by the choices of compost bins available in the market and worried it might smell and attract animals. So when my neighbor told me about a free composting class offered right by my house, I signed up. I’m sure glad I did.

 The class was held this past Saturday, and it was only an hour long. The class answered three basic questions I had: What kind of bin to buy, where to put the bin, and what to put in it.

 What kind: The best bins are the open caged typed bins. They let air circulate. According to the lady teaching the class, the big plastic bins often don’t let air in.

 Where to put it: Your compost has to cook in order to break down. I thought this meant putting it in a sunny spot. But it is the chemical reaction taking place that makes the stuff heat up, not the sun. The best place is a shady spot, so that it is not too cumbersome when you have to turn the compost.

 What to put in it: vegetable scraps, spoiled produce, egg shells, coffee/tea grounds and filters, grass clippings, spent plant and trimmings. DO NOT PUT: oil or animal fats, meat and bones, dairy products, peanut butter, weed seeds or pesticides. About animal droppings: you can put droppings of animals that are herbivores like chicken and bunnies. DO NOT PUT poop of animals that eat meat. So I have my compost bin set up and put in a layer of grass and leaves. Then I buried my first pot of kitchen scraps. (You have to bury the kitchen scraps). The compost needs to be moist like a well-wrung out sponge. My leaves and grass were already wet from the rain, so I haven’t added anything. Now fingers crossed, we’ll see if this works.

Welcome to Your Child's Brain

I just finished reading a terrific book, Welcome to Your Child’s Brain. With an infant in the house, it’s hard to find time to read. In fact, I had to renew the book three times, but it was worth it.
Written by two neuroscientists, Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt, the book was published last year.
The book is about the brain development of children, from birth to about the age of 18. The book explains, in laymen’s terms, different aspects of brain development, ranging from sight to learning mathematics. I found the section on language development particularly interesting. For example, newborns can distinguish sounds from every language at birth, but by six months, they lose that ability and start focusing on their mother tongue.
It also includes practical tips for parents. For example, I learned that being outside my reduce the chances of your child being myopic or near sighted. I also learned about the importance of teaching kids self-control, and one of the best traits I can have as a mom is being loving and warm to my kids.
Most importantly, I learned how little impact we have on how our kids turn out, which is reassuring. We can influence our kids, but most of them are genetically hardwired to turn out ok despite our parenting styles, which makes sense. If only kids with great parents survived, then the human species probably would have become extinct. The authors use the simile, “Children are like dandelions.”
After having three kids, I’m kind of sick of parenting books; this book isn’t a parenting book. But the information is presenting in such an interesting way, and it’s packed with such useful information, I think I learned a great deal and hopefully will become a better parent.

The Doula

On October 3, our family was blessed with the birth of our third child. It being my third pregnancy and delivery, I felt in some ways like an old pro. On the other hand, just like every child, every pregnancy and delivery is unique and this was no exception.
I decided this time around, I wanted an entirely natural birth and eventually decided that hiring a doula was the best way I could accomplish that goal. Both decisions were the best decisions I could have made for myself.
With my first two deliveries, I was given poticin, a synthetic form of oxytocin, which is used to stimulate contractions. In both cases, this was followed by my request for an epidural. Both deliveries resulted in healthy births, and I can’t say I felt the experiences were negative other than I hate being poked and prodded and pushing was very difficult. On the other hand, I found recovery to take awhile, especially my second delivery (My right leg was slightly numb for an entire month) and pushing took a long time.
I don’t know why I decided to go natural this time. With two kids in school, a fast recovery was important to me. In my research, I read that hiring a doula can reduce the chances of a c-section by 50%.
After interviewing a number of doulas, I decided to hire a lady named Stephanie. I liked her easy going nature. I could tell she was committed to helping women labor naturally, but didn’t seem like an ideologue. As much as I wanted to a natural birth, I know that sometimes medical intervention is necessary, and I didn’t want to feel like a failure or guilty later.
Stephanie was great. She was encouraging. She gave great advice to me and my husband. She wasn’t overbearing or pushy, but when she spoke her tone was firm enough, that I felt I could trust her. Near the end, when things became very difficult for me, I relied on her coaching and my husband’s support to get me through it.
Now that the experience is over, I can say that I am an avid supporter of natural births and doulas. Everyone has different experiences, but for me, going natural meant a faster delivery and recovery.

They talked about Jesus

Yesterday, my son came home from school and told me that during homeroom, the other kids at his table were talking about Jesus. When he mentioned that he wasn’t Christian, they were flabbergasted and gave him a hard time.

“I got annoyed at them,” he said. “So I just put up my privacy folder, and eventually, they started talking about what kind of scientists they wanted to be.”

He told me what bothered him the most was that they wanted to change who he was.

I thought he dealt with the situation well. He was vocal enough to give his opinion and when they kept criticizing him, he just stepped out of the conversation instead of letting it escalate.

As a mother, it can be very painful when you hear that kids in school are giving your kid a hard time. Of course, this was one isolated incident. My son has plenty of friends at school and in the neighborhood we live in. Still, the incident was a reminder that my son is growing up and will be faced with similar situations throughout life.

My little boy started the third grade this year, a big change from previous years. The teachers expect more, the kids have projects and major tests, they participate in the Blue Bonnet reading program for the first time, and they change classes. Even the basketball games are full court and the refs penalize traveling.

Teaching kids how to socialize, preserve their sense of identity, and get along with others is part of the process of growing up. It’s sometimes funny to see the difference between my third grader and my kindergartner. For my kindergartner, everyone in class is a friend and teaching social skills involves sharing crayons and taking turns.

I spoke with my son about what happened and how it made him feel. The truth is, trying to fit in and being the odd man out is something all children will go through. As a minority, the difference between my son and many of his classmates seems stark, but all kids will confront situations that challenge how they want to shape his/her identity. The kid who dresses differently, has a strange hobby, or acts differently. My mom taught at a full time Islamic School for awhile, and even there, she had a student who had trouble making friends because of where she lived. The other girls wouldn’t go to her house to play because she lived in a “bad neighborhood.”

As a parent, when I hear these stories, it breaks my heart. It really hurts to think of any child as being left out. But as a mother, I can’t let those negative feelings get to me. I don’t know if I’m taking the right approach, but I feel like I should just teach my kids to respect diversity and instill in them a sense of self- worth. (easier said than done) I also want them to know that even when the world outside seems tough and mean, they always have a warm and loving home to come to. It’s a slow process. Forget about kids, even adults have a need to “fit in.” It took me about 30 years to be really comfortable in my own skin.