How a Bowling Alley Changed My Life

It's been quite a while since I linked up with Finish The Sentence Friday. I've missed it and, when I read today's prompt, I knew I had something perfect in the Old Blog Archives! This story was originally published on my blog in December of 2013. I've tweaked it just a bit to fit the prompt and make it up to date.

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When I was 19, the thing to do on a Friday night was to go Cosmic Bowling. What is Cosmic Bowling you ask?? Well, basically, at midnight, the bowling alley turns off the house lights and turns on laser lights, a disco ball, and cranks up the music.  It was a night club atmosphere in the midst of a bowling alley.

Happy to be back on campus after the summer and too young to legally enter an actual bar, some girlfriends and I decided to go out and give it a try.

We arrived at the bowling alley, put on our magnificently fashionable bowling shoes, and took our place on the lane to which we had been assigned. A little bit later, a group of guys laid claim to the lane right beside us. They were obviously a little older than us - probably mid-twenties, and obviously had already had a few drinks.

Now, I'm not a proficient bowler, but apparently I was having a good night and I had bowled a couple strikes. My "talent" caught the eye of one of the guys in the other lane. He was not bowling very well himself (maybe too many beers??), so he suggested in a  rather flirtatious manner that I should bowl for him when his turn came around again. I reluctantly agreed. Then, when his turn came, I bowled the most perfectly beautiful gutter ball you ever did see.

Of course, I was embarrassed, but "that guy" seized the opportunity and said that I owed him a date because of my faux pas.  Being the Little Miss Goody Two Shoes that I was, I had not interest in going out with an older, less than sober guy, so I brushed it off. We continued to laugh about it while we finished our rounds of bowling. Then, my girlfriends and I left.

I thought that was the end of it.  After all, I hadn't given him my number or anything more than my first name.

You can imagine my surprise when, the next day, the phone in my dorm room rang and I heard, "Hi! This is David from the bowling alley last night." As it turned out, unbeknownst to me, some of my friends had given him my number and he was intrigued enough to call and formally ask me out.

We went out to lunch the next day, Sunday, at a local Italian restaurant that no longer exists.  Then, we headed to a local park for a walk. The rest, as they say is history. 

That was September 1996. We dated for a year and a half before he proposed. Then, about 7 months later, we got married in December 1998. It's hard to believe that we met 20 years ago and that, soon, we will celebrate 17 years of marriage.

If anyone in that bowling alley had told me I would end up marrying the guy in the next lane, I would have surely laughed hysterically. I didn't even want to give him my number! I still remember going back to my dorm after our first date that Sunday and the first thing the girls wanted to know was how old he was. I told them he was 25 and they proclaimed, "Wow!  He's old!" I guess, compared to 19, he was old, but that just seems so funny now - to think that 25 was "old." 

He quickly became my best friend. Since I was younger, he often had to choose between bar hopping with his buddies or hanging out with me. Fortunately, most of the time he chose me. I'm sure he took some ribbing from the guys for it and I'm grateful he had the backbone to endure the taunting.

Somehow we went from strangers in a bowling alley to this:

to this:

to this:

and this:

It's been 20 years full of challenges and joys, tears and smiles. David is still my best friend and I certainly hope I am his. He has taken me places I never dreamed I would go and he reminds me every day to laugh. He loves me in spite of myself and cannot imagine a life without him.

Who could have guessed that a simple Friday night with some girlfriends at a bowling alley 20 years ago would have changed my life so completely?!?!?!

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This post was part of the Finish The Sentence Friday Linkup and the sentence was "When I was 19 . . . "

This week's hosts are:
Kristi at Finding Ninee
Mimi of Mimi Time 
Vidya from Coffee with Me 

8 Times Motherhood Almost Killed Me

The people that sit around creating random, crazy holidays have dubbed today Plan Your Epitaph Day. Really, nobody likes to think about the end of life, do they? I mean, no matter how it ends, it's not likely to be a supremely pleasant experience. 

I suppose, though, that thinking about the end of our life can help us evaluate how we live our lives in the present. When it's my time to go, I hope that people will have good things to say about me.

I hope my friends and colleagues will say that I was a kind, hard working, intelligent person who added something of value to their lives.

I hope my husband will say that I was a loving, faithful wife; that I was his best friend and that he would have married me all over again. 

I hope my daughters will say that I was a great mom; that I was was there for them whenever they needed me; that I taught them everything they needed to know to become happy, successful women. 

I think that last one is what I think about most. After all, our children are our legacy. When all is said and done, I won't have any awards on my mantle and it's not likely that I will be famous for anything of great significance. What I will leave behind is my children.

It's been said that parenting, and specifically motherhood, is the hardest job you'll ever love. I would certainly concur. I love my three daughters beyond measure and motherhood is by far the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my 38 years of life. However, it is also without a doubt the hardest thing I have ever done. 

Parenting: The hardest job you will ever love! #TuesdayTen @TheGoldenSpoons

There have been days when I just wanted to run away; days when I thought I was not cut out for this motherhood gig; days when I thought motherhood might actually kill me. 

Seriously.

There have been times as a mom when I was beyond exhaustion and didn't think I could keep going. There have been times that I was so frustrated I literally wanted to bang my head against a wall. And, there have been moments when my heart hurt so much that I thought it was actually breaking into a million pieces.  

1. Saying Good-bye to "Squirt" - Before we had our own biological kids, David and I had a foster child we affectionately nicknamed "Squirt." After nine months with us, she went to live with a family who planned to adopt her. Saying good-bye was so, so hard. We only saw her once after that. She was six years old then, but she will be 20 years old this December. 
2. My first labor and delivery- I have a fairly high tolerance for pain and a fairly low tolerance for needles. So, when I was pregnant for the first time, the idea of a giant needle being inserted directly into my spine seemed far worse than the pain of labor. WRONG!!! After 10 hours of back labor and a nurse telling me it could be several more hours, I had a complete meltdown and got the epidural. (You can read the full story in The Mother Of All Meltdowns!) 
3. My third labor and delivery - By the third one, I thought I knew what I was doing. Again, life threw me a curve ball in the form of a 10 pound 2 oz. baby! Despite the epidural, I still felt that delivery and, afterwards, there was a bit of a scare that involved a lot of blood and me almost passing out. 
4. Megan's broken leg -  My middle daughter is something like a bull in a china shop sometimes. This was obvious even at an early age. Then, at 20 months old, she broke her leg. It wasn't a bad break - no misshapen leg or bone through the skin. The hardest thing about it all was sitting on an exam table with my oldest daughter beside me (she was 3) and Megan on my lap as two nurses put the initial last on her leg. We had been at the doctors' office for a couple hours already. She had endured x-rays and hadn't had a nap. She was exhausted. I was exhausted. As they manipulated her leg and wrapped it, she repeated through tears in her little toddler voice, "All done, Mommy. All done." I tied to be strong, but my mama heart hurt. Even the nurses were crying!
   
5. A trip to the ER - When Megan was three, she went through a period where she got several UTI's and, when she did, she got very sick very quickly. One such weekend, we had been to the pediatrician and received an antibiotic shot. By the afternoon, though, she was still running a 104 fever and became almost despondent, not responding to us when we talked to her and just staring blankly into space. Of course, they told us to go the the ER. Our neighbor came to sit with our 5 year old and our 6 month old (who was still nursing) while we headed off to the ER not knowing what would happen. Fortunately, it wasn't serious and we went back home in just a few hours, but nobody likes taking a kid to the ER!
6. Lost in DC - When my oldest was in 5th grade, she had the opportunity to go to Washington DC to see the presidential inauguration and take in the sites with a student travel group. The trip got off to a rough start because it was January and the weather didn't cooperate. The night before I was supposed to drive to DC, it snowed. We finally made it out of the driveway, picked up a sweet friend who agreed to accompany us, and got her to her hotel. We said good bye and, after a night in the hotel, my friend and I headed back to NC. Safely at home, I got a call that night letting me know there was an "incident" in which Rachel had been "temporarily separated from her group." In DC, at the Lincoln Memorial, on inauguration weekend. It took every fiber of strength in my being not to jump right back in my minivan and go get her. I couldn't. The incident was very short, she handled it well, and was quickly and safely reunited with her group. I had to let her stick it out.
7. When my youngest was bullied - Last year was a difficult school year for my youngest because there was a bully in her class who picked on her and many of her classmates frequently. The situation came to a head in January when the bully child threatened to have her dad come and kill my Emily. Needless to say, Emily was terrified and I pretty much came unglued. 
8. The Day I Killed the Tooth Fairy - It was an accident. I didn't mean to kill her, but I did. her death led to the death of Santa Clause and The Easter Bunny as well. The guilt almost broke me. It was bitter sweet, for sure. 

This is supposed to be a list of 10, but where are #9 and #10 you ask? Well, I left them off for now, but I'm sure they will happen. There will be many more times in my life when motherhood comes close to taking me under. There will be the moment(s) when each of my daughters drives away alone for the first time. There will be moments when they go off to college, walk down the aisle, and become mothers themselves when my heart will simultaneously burst with joy and break into a million pieces. 

Motherhood. It's the hardest, most rewarding job on the planet. If you can survive. 

Motherhood. It's the hardest, most rewarding job on the planet. If you can survive. #TuesdayTen @TheGoldenSpoons @MamaRabia

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Come link up again next Tuesday, November 10. November 13 is World Kindness Day, so share 10 ways to show kindness, 10 times someone showed you kindness, or do 10 random acts of kindness and tell us about it! 

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An InLinkz Link-up

A Different Kind Of Chaos

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a sweet friend who will be welcoming her third child a few months from now. While she is very excited about the family's new addition, she is also understandably nervous about how she will handle the chaos of having three kids under the age of five. As we talked, my mind immediately conjured up memories form that time in my own life. 

My third daughter was born exactly two weeks before my oldest started kindergarten and there was a 2 year old in between them. I was juggling sleepless night and breastfeeding a newborn while also parenting an active toddler and helping a five year old adjust to a difficult kindergarten year. It was madness and, honestly, there were days when I thought I would surely drown in the turbulent sea of motherhood. My life was an endless storm of diapers, car seats, toys, poop, and exhaustion. People told me it would get easier and I believed them because, it couldn't have gotten any worse, right?

Eight years later, I'm now at that stage of life - the one that is supposed to be "easier."  However, I'm not sure it really is easier. It's still chaos, it's just a different kind of chaos.

My girls are currently 8, 10 (almost 11), and 13. Sure, they are all potty trained and they rarely wake me in the middle of the night, but life is still tumultuous a lot of the time.

Instead of changing diapers and stressing about nap time schedules, I am juggling soccer practices, piano lessons, riding lessons, school events and ALL. THE. THINGS. I cannot even begin to tell you how many hours and miles I spend in my minivan each day.

The girls can shower themselves and get on their pajamas without help, but there is still the chaos of bedtime. Now, though, it happens at 9:00pm instead of 7:00 which means that, once it's over, it's pretty much time for me to go to bed, too, so I don't even get to enjoy any quiet time. I have never been a night owl and the only TV show I've watched alone in the past several years is House Hunters.

There are no longer toddler toys all over my house. Instead, there are shoes, backpacks, and empty food wrappers everywhere I turn. My kids have clothes on their bedroom floors and I have no idea which ones are clean and dirty. My kitchen sink is constantly full of dirty dishes.

We don't have toddler tantrums, but we do have tween girl hormone-fueled mood swings and meltdowns. We have arguments over homework and sibling disagreements. There are tears on a weekly basis and so much eye rolling that I honestly fear someone's face is going to end up stuck like that.  

I've spent hours upon hours packing lunches and we still have battles over what's for dinner. Plus? Event though mine are girls, they eat all. the. time. They are constantly starving  and, therefore, my grocery bill is ridiculous.

Don't even get me started on shopping for appropriate clothes to fit their continually growing and changing bodies.

Like I said - it's still chaos, just a different kind of chaos. And, sometimes, I still feel like I'm drowning in the busyness and exhaustion of parenting. 

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As I was thinking about all of this and slowly starting to crumble under the weight of it all last week, I came across this quote: 

It made me stop and reevaluate things a little bit.

The truth is, even though the stage we're in now is still pandemonium sometimes (most of the time), I wouldn't want to go back to the baby/toddler days. I think there is chaos, frustration, and disorder in every stage of life and the chaos we have now is a good fit for us. As my oldest is in her last year of middle school, I know that high school and college are looming. Just like I blinked and my babies became big kids, I am certain that I will blink again and they will be off on their own living their adult lives. So, I am trying to embrace the current chaos. On the days when I feel overwhelmed, I have to remember to breathe and forgive myself for the mistakes I make as a mom and a wife.

Maybe some stages are easier than others OR maybe every stage is just different.  No matter what "Book of Life" chapter we find ourselves inside, we have to remember to hang on tight and enjoy the ride before it's time to turn the page again.

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This post was part of the One Word Blog Linkup hosted by, Janine of Confessions of a Mommyaholic and me! This week, the word prompt choices were Happy & Pity. 

An InLinkz Link-up