I Googled Mom

At the dinner table the other night my youngest children began to tell me about how they were looking for images to use as their school email avatar. Realizing how quickly my children have advanced in this age of technology, I was proud and amused at the same time. Until they mentioned how they wanted a particular picture and the method in which they obtained the image online. I Googled Mom, they said.

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Get In the Boat

get in the boat, marriage, increasing libido

At the ripe young age of 28 my marriage was heavily on the rocks. Not just waves breaking at the shore, more like icebergs to the Titanic. Our ship was sinking, we each had one foot out of the boat. Not fully committed to making our marriage work and swimming towards opposite shores, struggling with the loss of identity as new parents, and only been married six years. Each of us was toxic for the other where even the smallest of discussions turned into a catastrophic argument just for argument sake. Continue reading “Get In the Boat”

Put on Your Best Face

Put on your best face, new mom smell, first time mom, becoming a mom, motherhood, first born baby

I have taken for granted the ease and grace for which I handled the chaos, the first three years, of day-to-day life with twins. Not just life with twins in those first three years, but life with twin infants and a toddler. Keeping one child alive was one thing, but keeping a toddler alive and two infants was a whole new set of balls to juggle. My first two requirements were always met each morning: keep the kids alive and keep myself alive. Mom success and I was winning. The number one question my friends and new mom friends ask is, how did I do it. How did I get up everyday and maintain a positive attitude, not completely lose my shit, and still manage to raise three really incredible people? Continue reading “Put on Your Best Face”

What In the Health

The last ten months have been such a whirlwind for our family. Our move last August threw such a wrench in our normal operations from my kids acclimating to new schools, The Chad settling into and operating in a new, high level, position at work, and my overall operation. I tended to take on the majority of the stress for my family, I wanted to ensure that they would fall back into some formal of normalcy, despite moving 2000 miles away from everything we knew for the past 14 years. In taking on all my family’s stress, I had my own stress that I was not dealing with, emotionally, physically and mentally. Despite my trips to the gym and processing what I could, I had not dealt with the negativity of past relationships that I had severed (as they no longer served me or my family), the loss of my close friends and family, and being alone in a state where I knew no one. What I did not know was that all of this stress, coupled with the stress my body was put through with my weight loss journey would be a perfect storm for my health. Continue reading “What In the Health”

DesignEvo – Create Logos for Free

free logos, designEvo, fotojet, designevo free logos

My dear friend Joie and I have been working together for the last four years. She and I have known one another for the last decade, and this past year we thought high time we created something of a logo for our collaboration. We have been juggling ideas of outsourcing a logo with services like Fiverr. We even contemplated free logos by doing it ourselves in applications like Paint or GIMP. Each time, we were just missing something that made it a truly professional logo, we were in need of a free logo creation application.

One day we happened to receive an email from a representative sharing about an online application for logos. The free logos application allows you to create a logo with thousands of design templates, various fonts and some cool icons. Continue reading “DesignEvo – Create Logos for Free”

I grieve

karie herring, karie herring religion, karie herring blog, thefivefish.com, the five fish blog

Sweat was hiding the tears as they trickled down my flushed cheeks. Most tears these days have been shed in silence, in hiding. Now I stand in the middle of a busy gym on the outskirts of Orlando. The smell of wet iron, the hint of copper, humbled by my current experience of feeling weak handling the iron, exposing my current internal weaknesses; which has been making every attempt to hide any feelings. Swallowing back the pain, unloading the plates off the bar, collecting my things, I went to my car to sob and further hide any visible pain.

Out of the industrial constructs and into the woods of the Florida state road to the place I now call home. The driving is soothing, but the tears continue to stream down my face, the sadness feels warm in my chest and almost overwhelming, as I feel the tightening and fight the feeling of my adrenaline. I am alone. My day is surrounded by the four walls that protect me from the world outside. Bearing these feelings is exhausting as I hide the pain from my entire family. A single friend, one near and dear, friends for over a decade and never meeting in person, has been my audience. My audience of one outside of The Chad who knows my struggle.

Having uprooted my family from Phoenix nearly eight weeks ago I have tried to find where exactly I fit. When I moved to Albuquerque in 1997 I immediately found my niche. I was able to meet people quickly. At work, within the community, my father’s associates, their spouses; friends and a community were no struggle. Having met The Chad, he became my community, my family, we combined and made it our community together. His friends mine and vice versa. Moving to Phoenix in 2003 The Chad and I struggled a bit to find our place. A young couple with a new baby created limitations in our social interactions, but still we managed to create a small community for ourselves over the past several years, and still surrounded by family, albeit my family this time while his still remained in Albuquerque.

Today, I find myself completely lost. Unsure where to start. I started by joining a gym in hopes of meeting other like minded individuals, women and men. Surely I could meet others the way I found a home with my former gym family; a way to escape the desert of the work from home life as a writer. Solitary work as a writer, I find myself the epitome of the stereotype. Searching for words, the strain to write anything of meaning otherwise the message nothing more than just text, I dare not share the conflict and strife of my intimate life for fear of pity or worse, more rejection. The shame of sadness, of feeling. Singularity yet again. Who would care to read the text of some random human. Such a balance of payments. Alone in my work, alone in the iron, alone in my thoughts.

This post was terrifying enough to write. I know my father is reading, possibly my mother, all privy to the solitary confinement of my feelings. Locked away for the past eight weeks as I have pushed through in eldest child fashion. Soldier on, as I always have, making every futile attempt to exhibit happy. When truly I grieve.

The feeling I have wrestled with like Heracles and Anateus, grief, crushing me. The past year has been a year of grieving for me that I have denied myself. The loss of a person I considered a dear friend, while she is still living, our friendship (in spite of my earnest and loving efforts) died. The devastating loss of my grandmother. Upon receiving the news of her passing I was greeted with house guests, soldiering on, I never had moments to grieve like I felt I should. Now I grieve the loss of a former life.

Life was almost Zionistic. My husband and I were both afforded the opportunity to work from home. In constant enjoyment of one another’s company. We never tired of each other, and were like love sick teenagers anytime one was away from the other. A wonderful community of people who banded together, as any village would, to be a part of our children’s lives where we could each rely on another for support. Neighbors that would dole out a ration of grief if they didn’t get the text you had a party when they were on a nightly constitutional through the neighborhood and saw more cars than normal in your driveway. Siblings to come to dinner and weekend pool parties, having long, philosophical talks of nothing and everything all at once. Enjoying watching my children flourish in this community we helped to build for them as well.

Now I grieve. Typing as a release in my grief, of a life I left 2194 miles away. My entire family. My friends. My home that I had raised my children for the last 14 years. I grieve and I am lost. My tropical, vacation like environment leaves me lost and bewildered of where to next. Where do I go from here? How do I start over at 40? My surroundings unfamiliar and what once felt like an adventure now brings about dread and loneliness. An occasional phone call, a random tag on a Facebook post, but nonetheless the day-to-day is habitual and regimented, empty and unfulfilling.

I prepared for everything in our cross country move. Everything had a box, a schedule, an arrangement, a preparedness. What I never prepared for was what I would feel once all the boxes were unloaded. After the final tractor trailer delivered our belongings. When my license plates no longer shimmered of purple majestic mountains across a burning horizon with the shadow of the saguaro. What I never planned for was the grief and the reality of being alone.

The New Mom Smell

new mom smell, twins, twin infants, twin babies

This month one of my dearest friends had her very first child. I could not be more elated for her and her fiance. I could not be more ecstatic that she has been reaching out to me for advice as she maneuvers the road of motherhood. In all of our talks what I have found is how our society has created an environment where they prepare us to be a parent in every clinical and technical sense. These parenting classes sell all the beauty and excitement of the new mom smell. Yet all of these parenting classes, coaching, and boot camps fail to prepare parents, especially moms, for the emotional gauntlet that they run in their first hours, days, weeks (and beyond) of becoming a mother. Continue reading “The New Mom Smell”

Emotional Investments

Emotional Investment, investing in relationships, meaning of names, name meaning

I began this post a year ago to the day. The genesis came from a call to my brother after visiting my Dad; at that moment my brother was on my mind and I wanted to say hello to him. I felt in my heart to reach out to my brother based on a chapter in his life, a chapter I had once visited and today find myself still in the process of writing. On our call he mentioned that he was short of calling me at the same moment as he received a package I sent him along with my handwritten letter. We laughed at the fact people never write letters anymore, just emails. I rather enjoy the catharsis in writing letters, something very intimate about pen to paper. Call the letter an emotional investment of time, efforts, love. Continue reading “Emotional Investments”