Guest Blog: Someday My Prince Will Come

You met her yesterday as the Best Scoop of the Week, and today she is back. Please welcome Everyday Mommy.

Love and Fixation

When Stephanie asked me to Guest blog over here at the Scoop on Poop, I enthusiastically agreed. I had never gust blogged before but what the heck. Then I decided to take a look at what some of her prior guest bloggers had to say and I thought oh my WHAT have I gotten myself into? There have been some really incredible guest bloggers over here! How the heck can I ever toss my hat in with them?

Additionally, I am a "wing and a prayer" type of gal. As a child, I never did homework ahead of time and in my 300+posts of blogging history I have written maybe three of them ahead of time. I write nearly daily, now in two blogs, but I don't plan things out, much. What I do do is decide, as I am writing the days post what the "Next Post" logically might be and write that down. Tomorrow I use that as my prompt to get started. Wait a second, my entire process begins with a prompt and that is exactly what The Drama Mama has given me! Ha! I might actually have a chance here... I may not be everyone's cup of tea but I do have a few followers so if I just do what I always do I'm bound to come up with something!

So now, without further disclaimers and carrying on here is my guest post, on Stephanie's prompts "Love" and "Fixation"

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The first thing that came to mind when I saw the word "Fixation" was of course "Oral Fixation" but since my very shy hubby would be mortified if I discussed our sex life and/or I really don't have the heart to catalog all the odd and foreign objects my preschooler shoves in her mouth this first definition is out the window. Instead I will lean more toward the obsession sort of meaning of Fixation. And contrasting Fixation with Love brings me squarely to the story of me and my sweet Hubby.

You see prior to meeting my Sweetie I would classify my Love relationships as pretty fixated in one way or another. In my twenties my fixation was on "finding the one" and I would serial date dozens of men and examine them all in terms of some perfect check list I had concocted. Perfectly nice men were ditched for being too poor, too rich, too skinny, too fat, too something. Bottom line, no one was ever going to be right because I wasn't really ready to be in a relationship.

By the time I was in my thirties I was convinced I had figured it all out so now I fixated on making things work and ended up in a couple of seriously out of balance relationships because I could "make it work." Really the only problem with this can do attitude is that it really only works when both of you are playing the same game. I spent five years trying to make a long term committed relationship lead to marriage with a guy who never, and still hasn't as of this writing, had any interest in being married. He enjoyed our relationship well enough but he was NEVER going to take it to the next level because it wasn't what he wanted. All my "work" just made me more frustrated and our entire relationship a lot less fun. In the end it was my fixation that kept us together not any long term dreams or compatibility. If I had been honest about this from the start we both could have been free to pursue our true desires a lot sooner.

Following my disheartening experience "trying to make things work" I decided I didn't know a damn thing about love or relationships and became a serial dater once more. On line dating, blind dates, bar dates, fix up dates, you name it I dated it! Mostly, I was fixated on having fun. That was until I met the man who became known as the "Rat Bastard" to all my friends. Unbelievably enough this guy actually made a pass at my sister while joining me at my brother's Thanksgiving dinner and I still continued to date him! Let's all say dysfunctional FIXATION together! I don't know what it was about him. Nothing he ever did or said ever added up to him being the kind of guy I would want to spend my life with but chance after chance I gave him. I finally moved 3000 miles away but even this did not stop the insanity. After a two year moratorium on the relationship I answered his call and then spent another on and off again year until I FINALLY felt my heart harden enough to say my final goodbye.

At this point in time, I am living in San Francisco and I feel my heart open to the idea of Love. Not a crazy madness sort of fixation but a true, nurturing, happy and reciprocal kind of love. I also have the remarkable feeling that I will know it when I see it and until it happens I can be truly happy and content on my own. I dated a lot during this period of time but for the first time in my life it was fixation free. I could meet the men who called or wrote me with an open heart. There was no forcing or changing myself to fit their or my fixation. We were all able to have fun and fun I definitely had.  Finally as I began to tire of my popcorn style of dating I began to consider what I wanted. What would my lifetime of love might look like? It came down to one sentence:

I want to be wooed and wowed for the rest of my life!

I was willing to offer the same in return but bottom line, after decades of dating, this is what I wanted. On a lark I posted an ad in Craig's list saying that very thing. Happily, oddly, magically my Sweetie answered this ad. Within a week we were dating exclusively and the Wooing and Wowing was underway... Once he surprised me for the long 4th of July weekend by saying "Meet me at the Airport with a bathing suit and a dress." and took me to Maui!! On a weekly basis he would surprise me with a love note, flowers or just an unexpected visit.  By the time he met my friends and family we were all ready engaged.  (You can read 101 reasons why I love this fabulous man in this Everyday Bliss Post)

We returned to Maui and eloped!

We started talking about starting a family but since we were already in our 40's I really had little hope. I had never been pregnant and given the multitude of risky encounters during my 20+ years of dating history it seemed likely that I may not be able. I had in fact, often said I would be damn upset if given all my scary close calls, if I were to find out I wasn't even able to get pregnant... you know all that worry for nothing! Surprise, surprise on our first try we were lucky enough to conceive!

Today it is a little more then four years ago when I posted that craig's list ad and I am here to tell you that LOVE dreams do come true! My Sweetie continues to woo and wow me on a daily basis and because of his insistence on trying to get pregnant... even against the odds... I have the profound privilege of being my daughter's mommy.  Perhaps it took me longer then most but when I finally gave up fixation for true love EVERYTHING became possible!

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Stephanie, Thank you so much for allowing my little jaunt down memory lane!! I hope I've honored the spirit of your request and all narcissism aside, hope your readers enjoy my little tale. Go for LOVE! FIXATION is only a sham!!

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Thanks for guest posting today, Kathy!! Stop by her blogs, Everyday Mommy and Everyday Bliss, and leave her some love. Have a great weekend, my friends!

BSOW: An Everyday Lady

Man I love putting that button up there. It really makes me drool. I can just taste the sweet strawberry, succulent chocolate and smooth vanilla in that bowl. How I manage to give that bowl away every week amazes me.

Want to know who else amazes me? Today's featured blogger. This lady has developed her own parenting mantra, a remedy for serenity, and has a bonafide ronious. I just love the things her daughter says, too. I could spend an easy hour just reading the scrolling banner of Girlisms.  She's got 13 virtues at her disposal too. I find her absolutely fascinating.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to the world of an Everyday Mommy living in a state of Everyday Bliss.

"Whats the one thing you hated your mom doing and promised yourself you wouldn't do as a mom yourself yet find yourself doing anyway?"

I've been pondering this question since you sent it to me and nothing really comes to mind. It might be because I'm an older mom, at 47 I don't immediately recall the annoying things my mom did when I was my daughter's age, which is three.  I did have to laugh though, when I heard myself say "Your cruising for a bruising" which is directly from my mother's playbook. My mom would have followed this statement up with a spanking but since we haven't and do not plan on using spanking as a punishment my words were comical at best. When I said it my daughter said, "What's a bruising, Mommy?" and I replied with some lame statement like "Be glad you'll never know and sit back down in your chair before I have to show you." Needless to say that interaction was entirely useless for the both of us. 

Another factor in my complete loss of recollection about my childhood is my propensity for seeing things through rose colored glasses. I've already told you my mom used to spank us. I've been told, but do not honestly recall, that there were incidents with rubber spatulas and wooden spoons. If you ask my sister, who was a year younger then me, what her childhood was like she will site the years of therapy that have yet to fully repair things between her and my mother. I on the other hand can only recall the June Cleaver (sitcom perfect mom from Leave it to Beaver) way in which my mom would throw our childhood birthday parties. Maybe it wasn't always great behind closed doors but when company came over my mom knew how to do it right! She decorated to the hilt and every kid would leave saying I had the best mom on the planet. I guess if every girl in Miss Zappa's second grade class said it, it must be true!

I know in my heart that my mom did her best. The day I was born she looked at me with the exact same love and hope for her daughter as I did when my girl was born. Knowing that fact alone probably repaired any ill will I might have had for her. Somehow in the end, I turned out to be a happy and fairly well adjusted person so while I can't agree with some of her methods I can only hope that my daughter grows up to be at least as happy as I am. 

Until that time comes however, I may continue to unconsciously parrot odd, ill advised threats "Don't make me come in there!" or "Do you know how much your bottom is going to hurt?" while my bewildered daughter wonders what the heck her mom is saying and continues to paint all over the walls, dump cereal on the floor or smear toothpaste in her hair while I figure out what I really want to be saying. Hopefully what ever discipline practice I finally instill will not net the turrets like ability to mimic phrases unheard for more then thirty years because frankly, even without the draconian follow up, hearing the words fall from my mouth is disturbing and I certainly don't want my girl to inherit that!

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Let's give her a hardy welcome by leaving lots of love here and over at her blogs, Everyday Mommy and Everyday Bliss. Thanks, Kathy, for hanging out over here today. I can't wait to see your guest post tomorrow!!

Don't forget to come back tomorrow and read her guest post. Have a great Friday!!

(p.s. in case you missed it, my one and only GUEST POST is over at her place during moxie week. Go check it out.)