Life By Mom's Rules: A Survival Guide

This woman and I go way back. A little more than 30 years. This is my mother. Growing up I had some serious hero worship going on here. Not because she was perfect (she's not) but because even though she wasn't she *tried*. My parents divorced when I was 7 and I was mostly raised by mom, mostly as a single mom, so you can imagine that things were a little fly by the seat of our pants at times. But we always landed on our feet. She taught me to adapt. She taught me to stand back up. She taught me to try again and go on.

Many of the lessons my mother taught me I didn't even realize I'd learned until I had my own kids. Some of them were lessons in what not to do (that part about not being perfect, remember?). But all of them were valuable. So I will share these morsels of life with the rest of you. Every now and then I'll add a lesson or two from The Survival Guide as I learned it.

Life By Mom's Rules: A Survival Guide

Always mark the easter eggs. That way you know when the kids find one of LAST years eggs that was missed the first time around.

I was so proud of all of my eggs and I was very angry that my mother took the pretty blue one away that I found on the trailer hitch. Even though she really saved me from something bad I found it incredibly unfair.

Style is relative. Are you happy? Then that's what matters and don't let anyone tell you different. Of course, you may have to develop a thick skin to be happy. This applies to more than clothes but the lesson started there.

When in second grade I decided to dress myself. I had a plaid shirt, a pink fluffy skirt with white polka dots, snow boots, etc. I was Stylin'! So I went out to the kitchen where mom and Mackey (my mom's best friend, also known as Other Mother) were having their morning coffee. I said "How do I look?" And without missing a beat my mother replied "Fine. If you're going to a blind school." Thanks mom. Thanks for that...

Don't wake up Middle-Middle. She'll punch you in her sleep. So will Big-Big for that matter. And me too... You know what? Don't wake up any female in our family prematurely unless you are bleeding or dying... Otherwise you will be if you know what I mean. In fact, that was pretty much my mom's rule verbatim. I recall voluntarily waking my mother up twice. After being bitten by a bat in second grade and after being hit by a car in the tenth. In both cases the first words out of my mouth were "Mom, I'm bleeding..." It had to be that extreme because nobody likes to wake dragons.