So without further ado, please give a warm welcome to one of the most genuine and honest bloggers I know, Miss.   Her words often reflect how I’ve felt, but never had the courage or eloquence to express it in the manner she does.  Just read below and you’ll see.  Thank you, Miss!
____________________________________________________________

How I came to guest post for Sandy is silly in it’s own right. I asked her to guest post for me and she turned it around on me and here I am. Watch out for her, she’s tricky.

I adore Sandy in so many ways. She’s honest. She’s beautiful. She’s funny and sweet and eloquant and I admire her strength. I’m honored to be here and lucky to know her.

Ten Rules for Being Human by Cherie Carter-Scott (http://www.bluinc.com/free/human10.htm)
With my own interpretation following openly.

1.You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.

I think everyone has something about their body that they just loathe. For me, its my mommy tummy. No matter what I do (such as sitting in front of the computer, watching TV, oh and sleeping) I just cant seem to get rid of it. I even tried going on the coffee and cigarette diet but that just made me dizzy. It is not Miss recommended. Either way, I’ve learned to embrace what I do have and even my tummy, except when it makes me buy bigger pants. Then I don’t like it so much.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called “life”.

It took me a long time to figure out that every bad thing, every good thing, and all these tears I shed over both result in me learning something about life. I’ve learned acceptance. I’ve learned how to move on, even when moving on from something seems like that most painful thing in the world. I’ve learned that the best thing to do is to accept every event in your life with open arms, be it good or bad. We won’t know the lesson we are learning, until its through.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work”.

Guess what. This thing we call life? It’s going to hurt. It’s going to feel like its going to kill us, time and time again. We literally ache from the injustice of certain situations. But that’s what life is. It’s a series of moments, of curveballs, of strikes thrown at us time and time again. And sometimes, sometimes we get lucky enough to get a hit off one.

4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

We are our own worst enemy. Most people are creatures of habit. And most people are the one’s that hurt themselves the most. I often find myself repeating my own toxic behaivor, no matter how much it hurt me the last time. I just keep thinking “maybe this time will be different”. And you know what? Maybe it will. Maybe it wont. But I hope to figure out a little bit more of the lesson along the way.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain it’s lesson. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.

Be open to life. I truely believe this is the only way to live. If you hide from it, believe me, you will miss some pretty beautiful and amazing things along the way.

6. “There” is no better a place than “here”. When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here”.

Well this one just smacks you in the face doesn’t it? This statement is my life. I am always striving for an end result, a place to rest and sometimes I think I need to just stop and realize that I am “here”. I have to live in the moment, for the moment. I need to learn how to be ok with being just “here”.

7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

But isn’t that the beauty of relationships? No matter the kind, you find common ground and you embrace what you have together. Or, on the flip side, if you really dislike a person, it may often be that they remind you a little of yourself. Even if that does suck to admit. Because like me, all of you are perfect right?

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

Sigh. This number 8 here opens a can of worms for me that Sandy’s blog is just not ready for. I hate settling. I think that when you settle, you cheat yourself. Live your life. Don’t be afraid to live it. But I know that for some, it just isn’t that easy. That whole “doing the right thing” bullshit makes people silently suffer so that other people can be happy. Those happy people? Have no clue what someone is sacreficing for them. Sigh.

9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

My answer is mine and mine alone. We all need to figure out what our own answers are. Do we figure it out at the end of everything? Hell if I know. I certainly hope so. How scary to think we might not.

10. You will forget all of this.

You can nod your head in agreement to some of these things. But mostly, you’ll forget. So will I. It is what it is. Guess that is one of those lessons to be learned.

Sandy! Thank you for letting me fill space on your blog while you are off relaxing. Also? You owe me! xo

So allow me to let you in on a secret.  If you have a kid that is four years old or later, you can find out his or her destiny in life from a simple experiment with cookies.  Things like being well or badly behaved, to SAT scores, to their BMI index as an adult.  And it has nothing to do with whether the cookies are chocolate chip or raisin (stupid raisins, stay out of my cookie!).  It has to do with willpower.

I heard about this from a special podcast by WNYC’s Radio Lab called Mischel’s Marshmallows.  Radio Lab is a fascinating show that explores science in creative and engaging way.  I would highly recommend it if you are a podcast listener, and you could also catch it on NPR on the weekends.  The gist of this particular podcast talks about an experiment conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960’s.  He had three daughters from ages two to five, and noticed that around age four, they started to exhibit to ability to delay gratification through willpower.  He then conducted an experiment on 500 preschool kids where he would have one marshmallow or cookie on a table in an isolated room.  He told each child that they could either have one cookie now, or wait and have two cookies later.  Then he left the room and video taped them through a one-way mirror.  As you can imagine, this is pure torture for kids and there are many funny videos on YouTube recreating this experiment.  Some kids caved after a minute, and some kids made it to the end at twenty minutes.  The average was around 7 or 8 minutes.  Five or six years later, many of the kids attended the same school as his daughters, so completely informally, he asked his daughters how these kids were doing.  He found out amazingly that the kids that could hold out the longest were doing better in school.  When the kids were 14 to 17 years old, he did a follow up study.  The differences were remarkable, there was a 210 point difference in SAT scores between the kids who could wait 1 minute and ones that could wait 20 minutes.  That is a huge difference that can’t possibly be chance!  The kids that waited the longest went to better colleges, had better GPAs and the parents reported that they were better behaved.  The other kids more likely to be classified as problem kids and bullies, and be suspended from school.  Mischel extended and expanded the study to when the original kids reached their forties.  The kids who could wait 20 minutes, went further in their education, had better jobs, and were even skinnier.

So does this mean that this seemingly innocuous experiment with cookies at the age of four can predict how successful you are in life?  There is a debate on whether this is a hard-wired trait or a product of upbringing.  Can you teach your child techniques to distract themselves from the temptation, or are they forever doomed if they fail the cookie test?  Either way, it is pretty scary to think that I could just pull my 5-year-old daughter aside right now, and have a pretty good idea how she will turn out.  Should I do it?  Or should I just wait to see how her life unfolds?  I’m so tempted but yet don’t want to bias my view of her.

Should Momisodes torture Babisodes with the cookie test next year?  Of course, this would make for an awesome time lapse video for a blog post, so maybe I will try it.  Stop by to visit me at mommy bytes to see more adventures with our daughter and her big brother.

Please give a warm welcome to my friend Lou, and stop by his place to wish his 2nd son a Happy Birthday!

—————————————————————————————————————

Sandy’s gone.  Vacay.
No one here but us chickens.
And a small Haiku.

Momisodes? Away.
Babisodes.  Dadisodes, too.
Gone to Florida.

Land of Oranges,
And Wally.  And Grandparents.
Long due honeymoon.

There will be fam’ly,
And, if they’re really lucky,
They will be alone.

They won’t be gone long,
but long enough to recharge,
the Love Battery.

Have lots of fun, guys.
Wash your hands, be careful.
Come home to us, safe.

————————————————-

Visit  A Mommy Story for more Haiku Friday participants.

________________________________________________________________________

While Momisodes is furiously trying to get caught up on some play time with Babisodes or nap time with Dadisodes paperwork, she has graciously invited me to come watch things at her house.  I promised I wouldn’t hit the liquor cabinet…much.

As I was working my way past my third drink, and only shllllluuuurrwing a lidddddddlllee bit, I decided I would speak on this ever important, earth moving topic.

You’ve had this happen, please tell me you have.

You’re at the meat counter ordering a pound of salmon (alright if you’re not a fish eater…work with me), and the guy behind the counter says, “so what are you planning to do with the salmon?” 

Wha-huh?  What am I planning to do with it?

It’s the end of a very long day and the last thing Grandy is wanting to do is get groceries.  Hubby has been home for a couple hours, and could go himself but no…it’s what I must do (insert “bless his heart” comment here). 

I shake my head, after briefly fantasizing a moment where I’m somewhere else, and come back to reality where the cute little store worker is standing there with a smile patiently waiting for my answer.  What am I planning to do with the salmon? 

“Um, cook it for my family?” I replied not very certain I understood.

“Really?” she replied “How are you going to cook it?”

While trying not to sound irritated, “I haven’t given it that much thought.”

I take my salmon and go about my way, working my way to the deli counter where I prepare to disappear again.

“So, is all this turkey meat just for you?”

Huh?  Again?  REALLY??

I can certainly appreciate how friendly everyone at the grocery store is.

Can I help you find something?

How are you doing today?

Finding everything okay?

I love the helpfulness I receive.  Now, do understand that perhaps this day I am feeling a bit more homicidal hormonal than usual, but I’m seeing a pattern and failing to find the cuteness.

Is this something in their employee handbook?  You must find some conversation to fill the time while packing the customer’s meat. 

Let’s imagine how this would work in some of the other departments, just for the fun of it. 

Hygiene section:  Are you sure you don’t want the one with wings?

Pharmacy:  So, how long have you been needing an ointment for that?

Paper supplies:  Wow! That’s a lot of toilet paper.  Are you alright?

Along these lines, I can only imagine some of the questions the checker gets to ask:

Honey, with all this junk food, why are you bothering with DIET soda?

Maybe it was just me being crazy and cranky.  I’m usually the one wishing them all a great day, because I know it can be a thankless job. 

But really, when your customer is tired and waiting for her order, don’t offer her a large coffee because “she looks tired.”  Chances are she IS tired…and still doesn’t want to hear it.

Now…back to Momisodes’ liquor cabinet.

::Hicup::

*Instant message window chimes*

12:27am- Buddisodes: go to bed

Me: Want to guest post?

Me: you know you wanna do some 5-7-5.

Buddisodes:  Haha

Me: C’mon….you’re a ‘foo for the haiku!

Buddisodes: so what do you want?

Me: a haiku

Buddisodes: bout?

Me: anything you want

Buddisodes:  r u taking advantage of me?

Me: no

Me: I asked Dadisodes

Buddisodes: is he doin it?

Me: he said no

Me: you’re my back up

Buddisodes: damn

Give it up once again for my fellow insomniac friend for over 10 years, who has not Ku’d since the tenth grade,… BUDDISODES!!!!

It is getting late
Why is Momisodes online?
Everything alright?

Knew she’s been busy
Suckered into a haiku
Buddisodes is back

When your friends have kids
you may not see them for years
Testing ties that bind

Nationwide calling
E-mail and instant message
Birthday cards are nice

It takes an effort
to stay close from a distance
But that’s what friends do

You stay up past two
so somebody that needs it
sleeps a little more

Find other Haiku’s (more likely to be written by their blog owners) at A Mommy Story.