Midlife Mom

Navigating the teen years… and beyond
About Rebecca Haynes

Archive for January, 2012

Worried about your home’s water/air quality?

Monday, January 23, 2012 by:Rebecca Haynes
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Most of us do everything possible to keep our families safe. We research the best carbon monoxide detector to buy or which types of locks or security system to install. But do we check the quality of the air in our homes or similarly, the water coming out of our taps?

Many of us do, of course. But if it’s something that concerns you and you want to learn how to better monitor it or even check it for the first time, don’t miss How Healthy is Your Home?, this week’s free HealthyLife magazine seminar.

Sponsored by Waterware Kitchen & Bath Designer Showroom, the evening will begin at 5:30 and aside from air and drinking water quality, will feature information on how to lessen the effects of allergies through use of steam in the shower, how custom showing can help alleviate body aches and how the addition of radiant heat can warm up those cold floors and also help to even out temperatures in your home.

Join me at this event, which promises not only valuable information for your family but also a $500 gift certificate raffled off to one lucky attendee. Plus, everyone there will receive 40 percent off selected items. A nice deal if you’re contemplating any updates to your home.

The evening will run until 7:30 and will be held at Waterware’s Stamford showroom, 92 Research Drive. It’s free, but we ask that you register online at www.healthylifect.com/seminar. And while you’re on our website, check out our story on how to turn your bathroom into a spa-like retreat — something else you can find out about at our Thursday seminar.

Hope to see you there!

Ignoring my own lecture

Friday, January 13, 2012 by:Rebecca Haynes
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How many times have you chastised your children for doing something foolish just because their friends were doing it? How many of us have used the phrase “So if everybody jumps off a bridge you’ll do it too?”

Well, I neglected to follow my own advice this week. I made a ridiculous post on Facebook in the guise of supporting breast cancer awareness simply because lots of my friends were doing it. Really bad judgment! I’m way too old to be doing things like this!

Here was the setup. Lots of my friends started posting statuses that said they were going to be in a certain country or big international city for X number of months. Something’s up, I thought, realizing there was no way everybody was suddenly moving to St. Petersburg and France and Mexico and the Dominican Republic and all of the destinations that were being mentioned. And even if some strange confluence of events was taking everybody away, there was no way some of these women, who have jobs and families, were going to be gone for a year or more, which many of them were professing.

But then I got the FB message that explained it. To support “Breast Cancer Awareness” women everywhere were being asked to post “I am going to BLANK for BLANK months.” The the first blank was filled in with a city or country that you chose based on your birth month and a list supplied in the message that assigned a different city/country to each month. The second blank was to be the day of the month of your birthday. So my post was supposed to read “I’m going to London for 16 months.”

Well, I’m not sure where my brain went in the few seconds I took to make the post. After posting, I went to bed. In the morning, however, there were messages galore waiting for me. Family members and friends all wanted to know what was up. A couple of them were already planning trips to come visit me! Of course, it didn’t help that my husband has spent a significant amount of time in London over the past year or so on business, making a move there something that wouldn’t be totally outside the realm of possibility — a fact not lost on my family and friends.

I immediately removed the post and also sent messages to the people who sent me comments (didn’t have time to send notes to people who just “liked” my status), telling them it was a prank and I was just joking. Besides, I didn’t know if maybe the people who only “liked” the status were in on the prank.

Several people I love are breast cancer survivors, but this plan really had nothing to do with supporting breast cancer awareness. In fact, I can’t imagine that it did anything other than cause confusion for friends and relatives of lots of women out there who were making these posts.

Sure, we’re all having a good laugh over it now. Lucky for me, my family has a healthy sense of humor. So do all of the ladies I know who also posted these statuses. They also have big hearts and wouldn’t hesitate to throw their support to something that put itself out there as a good cause. But I’ll use better judgment in the future, and follow my own advice about not jumping on an unnecessary bandwagon!

Make the bullying stop!

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 by:Rebecca Haynes
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What is it with girls? Why are they so nasty to each other? Why do some of them seem to take sadistic pleasure and think it makes them “cool” to bully or belittle others?

I’m at a loss.

Sure, I remember my own high school days. There were definitely girls who thought they were better than everybody else and sometimes they would do or say horrible things to others. And there were definitely a few girls who bore the brunt of teasing and other nasty behaviors.

But nothing like what goes on today. Frequently we hear stories about bullying and its repercussions. Yesterday I read about a teen recently hit by a bus. Turns out she actually threw herself in front of it to commit suicide — this after enduring months of being tormented by some nasty kids in her school.

Luckily nothing like this has happened in my little town, at least that I know of. There have, however, been a few students whose parents have pulled them out of the district and enrolled them in private schools. They felt it was the only option to help their kids escape the bullies making their lives miserable. But what do the rest of us do?

Why has society become desensitized to such cruel behavior? And how do I help my own daughter deal with this issue?

And why do girls seems to be worse perpetrators than boys? Sure, my boys dealt with bullying on occasion, but girls seems to have honed it to a cruel science.

Luckily, K is strong and has been able to deal with whatever comes her way. She’s also learning a valuable lesson about what it means to be a true friend and sadly, that not everybody out there is a nice person.

Makes me wish for simpler days, when more kids grew up knowing the definition of integrity.