Proud moments as a mother.

Not long after we moved to the beach, I had set a cheese board to smoulder on the stove.  Calvin was at work and I was sitting with the oldest son and youngest daughter assisting them with their homework at the dining room table.  It was dinner time. You know mw, Ms. Multi tasker (even at seven months preggo, I was pretty good at it.)  Well, the dining room table was off from the kitchen, sort of in the living room.  It also happened to be about five feet from the back door.
While cooking, I happened to turn the wrong burner on to boil a some water.  Ikept a small, wooden, cheeseboard on the back burner and THAT was the burner I turned on instead.  While we were not in the kitchen, it had a chance to fill our small kitchen up with a great deal of smoke. Then the AC kicked in and smoke just ROLLED out of the kitchen.  Everything else seemed to happen at the same time.  At the instant we noticed the smoke, the smoke detectors went off.  I immediately knew what I had done as I do that chit all the time. So I got up an took two steps toward the kitchen.  My mind was racing and focused on getting that cheeseboard off there and into the sink before it burst into flames. At the same time, I also thought of the kids. I turned around, and CJ was still sitting at the table...totally not knowing what was going on. I am certain he knew exactly what I did.  There was not a fire....YET.  I turn to look for Alyssa and all I see is the back door swinging.
I lean just a little bit to my left and see a tiny face of a five year old, about twenty feet outside the back door trying to get a glimpse of what was going to happen next.  I will take the time to tell you I could not have been more proud of our baby girl in that moment. I immediately took care of the cheeseboard, no fire, just a lot of smoke. Whew!  Then retrieved our daughter and covered her face in smooches and filled her ears with praise.
She had done the right thing.  In hindsight, it was cute and funny because she got the Hell out of Dodge Jack!

Now, lets move forward ten years:

My dear readers know that I am a WAH professional and I work from home.  The other night, I was working and a thunderstorm came through.  Just after I shut down my computer and systems, there was a terribly bright lightening strike as well as horrible thunder.  I heard my kids in the next room scrounging around.

When I finally got everything settled, I walk into the hallway to a pitch black house. What happened next would have been a good scream scene for a horror movie (provided that I screamed, of course.)
The darkness began to speak to me in children's voices. O.o....I held up my phone as I was not near a light switch and seen that my children were all sitting on the couch, in the living room, in the dark.  Well, well, well.  I found out later that Alyssa corralled the children to the couch and turned all the lights off to be safe during the storm.  Another proud moment, I must say.  However, when the ten year old got up to use the bathroom, (I had joined them in the darkness, of course, it was quiet and I was NOT going to pass that up) he turned the light on so he could see.  Here comes Alyssa "All that electricity!!!!"  Hahaha.  Yes, she was being overly cautious, but she was being safe all in the same breath.  Yes, Momma is proud!  Daddy taught her that and she absorbed the safety knowledge well.

I am confident, as a parent that she will be safe and have an emergency plan when it comes to nature bringing forth her rage.  I can only hope that it will spill over into her interactions with people when she goes off to college or begins to have a more colorful, (yikes, and even less structured) social life and as an adult.  We parents spend our entire lives teaching our children to be safe and to be their own person and can only hope that the values we establish for them to mirror are the good ones and that they apply them to their own lives and go on to be productive adults who get to live long, healthy, and happy lives.

This is the direction I believe our daughter is heading in and I could not be more proud.  What proud moments have you had (like these) with your children?

Have you ever had a moment that was potentially catastrophic and hilarious all in the same moment?

I have a 3 digit IQ but you would never know it. Dangerous in da hood.

My dear husband does not understand the absolute hilarity I find in the show "The Big Bang Theory."  Just thinking about Sheldon and his BAZINGA makes me giggle.  Yet, I sit here in da hood and it goes to waste but for the random times when I use my "useless random trivia" that I fork out at people from time to time.

Yes, an education that costs me more than my house that I will certainly pay for until retirement.  What a waste it is.  Now that I think about it, that is really brilliant, huh?  Pay thousands and thousands of dollars for an education that has to yet rival that of Chinese children and then spend the rest of our lives paying for it.  Where is the aptitude in that?  Further, some of us even get an education that has oh......about 3 jobs in the outlook because we are told to go after what interests us in college.  There is no future in that is there?  No, we have to aspire to be the 16 year old kid that got lucky enough to create an app that sells for millions of dollars because of popularity.

There it is folks..........popularity.  That is what life boils down to, isn't it?  All through school, you are not accepted unless you are the poplular one.  Those geeks of us who are lucky enough to get into good colleges outside of the sports realm are still NOT popular.  Then, upon entering college, it is all about the soror houses and you have to show that you CAN be popular to get into those. Well, unless of course it is the "Geek" house.  Then, you are a member of the elite outcasts.  Once again, it lends itself to popularity.  Also, I found that if you are not of the athletic persuasion, you get no favors when it comes to grades but those that choose to be lazy (academically) get their grades handed to them with a silver plater. Thus, the popularity symplex.  Finally, when you get into the real world, you find that it is not all about your skills or your great resume that you worked tirelessly at no-pay internships where you learned all the valuable real world skills that you need in your new career, no, folks it is about who you know and what good people you are in cahoots with. Popularity.

I have found that, even in the digital world, it is popularity that takes precedence.  Ever been jealous upon joining a new social network of someone that has 6,000 friends to your measly 347?  Popular much?  What about this whole virtual "networking" thing?  Ever peered at a LinkedIn profile and been pissed off because someone has been endorsed time and again for things that they NEVER do?  Ayup.

The only thing that makes the exception to my theory of the popularity complex is LUCK.  Yes, that kid was lucky that he was POPULAR and created something cool that he and all his friends were hip to and then happened to be contacted by Google to buy his popularity.  Now he can not worry, so long as he plays his cards right.

Where is my luck in all of this?  Where is my popularity?  Sure, I have a few social networks in my pocket. Sure, I rant on FB (Ima Rant--you should check it out. Search mmiles@coastal.edu) I even have a blog and a LinkedIn profile.  I also have a HUGE student loan debt that I will never pay off and a three digit IQ.  Boy, I could blow the top off Harlem with the information I knew and the fact that I surely know where to take that info and cause a stir. However, that is a digression I will not take.  I choose to let people lead their popular lives and make popular (and unpopular) decisions on their own. Karma gets them there.  That is where the rest of us unpopular folk sit back in our swivel chairs, fold our hands behind our head, and go ahhhh.  Stupidity is not my forte.

Yes, I have a three digit IQ but you would never know it.  I have book smarts and if I were to ever acquire a three digit streetQ and even a two digit one in popularityQ I would be Dangerous in da hood. (Even more so than I already am.)

My name is Michele....and I am NOT popular.