Mama's Musings

New York, New York

I went to New York City this past week. What an adventure! If you like movies, you've got to read this.

On Tuesday, I met filmmaker/director/producer Stephen Simon, co-founder of the Spiritual Cinema Circle, in New York City at the screening of his latest movie, CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD. I encourage everyone to go see it on October 27th when it premieres nationwide.

It is a moving story about Neale Donald Walsch as a homeless man living in an Ashland, OR park with a broken neck for over two years and how he came out of the darkness and into the light in the most inspiring way. He later went on to write a series of books CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD. I met him on Tuesday as well. I didn't realize you could actually laugh and cry at the same time, but I did right there in the New York theater.

I am a member of the Spiritual Cinema Circle, which offers monthly DVD's with 4 to 5 movies you can keep forever (they make great gifts, too).

To learn more about The Spiritual Cinema Circle, click on this banner:

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD

Another neat thing: James Arthur Ray, who, along with Neale, is featured in another movie, THE SECRET (which you will own in December if you sign up for the Spiritual Cinema Circle by November!!), is touring the country to talk about Harmonic Wealth(R). It's not just about financial wealth, but about how we can truly live the lives we want spiritually, emotionally, and physically. He'll be on Larry King Live Nov. 2 & 16th to address how we have moved beyond positive thinking to manifest things in our lives. I get to work with his team during his campaign. It is exciting to be a part of such wonderful work.

More on James Ray here:

http://www.jamesray.presskit247.com

We really can be anything we want to be!

Thank you, Angels

Alanis Morrissette is a singer who informs my being. She was there when I hormonally wept over her sonorous lines of desperation, the next moment knowing I must be pregnant. Each time I cried over one of her songs, I knew one of two things: I was either pregnant or pms-ing.

But there's more. The very words that one day made me cry also made me laugh. Her contrasts, her juxtapositioning of hot and cold, wet and dry, dead and alive, truly touch me.

"Play the thank-you, song, Mama!" my darling blonde child cooed from the backseat on our way to Munich one day. We blared it, punching the replay button three times before we arrived at our destination. Alanis thanked India, Providence and Disillusionment all the way down the A9.

Today her voice of gratitude haunts me as I sit, jetlagged, on my hotel bed in New York City, ten blocks from where the Yankee baseball pitcher, Cory, met his demise up against an apartment building where, miraculously, no one other than the two passangers were killed or hurt.

My plane touched down just 2 1/2 hours later. Thank you Pilot, thank you Providence, thank you Ground Crew. Thank you, Angels, for keeping me safe so I can write these words today.

Oktoberfest and Dirndl Days

Oktoberfest ended on Tuesday, but my dirndl is still hanging on the back of my bedroom door. Like most traditional Bavarian festivals, wearing "Trachten" is part of the deal. For several years, I rejected the idea of squeezing myself into one of those tight-fitting dresses. That is, until I realized it is a sign of respect to do so.

Consequently, I marched to the next dirndl store, palms wet and chest heaving, in the attempt to find the right fit. The petite sales lady cast a critical eye at the rack of Bavarian wear.

"Size 4. Definitely!" she exclaimed, lifting a dress with her tiny arms. She must be joking. I tried on the dress, needing her assistance to actually place the hooks in the appropriate eyes. In the end, I got an orange and white checkered dress, which, with a terrier in a basket and a pair of ruby slippers, would make you think "There's no place like home."

Folgers Coffee

The FedEx guy ambled up the drive. Standing with my arms sunk in soapy dish water, I grinned. A package, I whispered to my dish towel as I rid my limbs of suds.

Folgers sent me three varieties to taste. They told me to write an honest review of the new flavors. In all fairness, I tried to discourage them from sending me anything.

"But I live in Germany," I stated to a lovely woman named Amy who had sent me an email offering a taste test. Her insistence brought the Mr. FedEx Guy to my door.

The package itself was enough to make me dizzy.

"What a sturdy box!" I yodelled, socking it away from the little kids with scissors that live in my house.

Then came the coffee. Silver packaging and funky nomenclature:

Lively Colombian (come on out, Shakira!)

Morning Café (I'll have a croissant and Le Monde for breakfast, si vous plait)

Vanilla Biscotti (Due cappucini  -- grazia!)

The Lively Colombian was the best. Like its name, it had a full-bodied flavor and, my hips don't lie, I really liked it. It gave me just the right amount of heart palpitation without obstructing my vision.

Morning Café was weaker and, thus, not my favorite flavor. It was gentle and the smell truly made me homesick, but golly, folks! Rev it up a little, okay?

Vanilla Biscotti was a true test. I don't like flavored coffee (I don't do artificial anything), and it took me a full week to get over having to taste it. I added milk, took three sips, spit it out and promised my tongue I'd never do it again. Call me crazy, but I'm a Colombian blend lover at heart.

Guinea Pig Heaven

Every family needs a narrative. For those who live on a horse farm, the family history is framed by equine care. For those in the city, it’s the slick city streets and cultural fare. For multicultural families such as my own, we require a cohesive storyline that congeals our often conflicting world views.

No two people are exactly alike. After spending many years in various parts of the United States and Germany, I can tell you that Germans and Americans are not the same at all. While we may share a similar love of certain things, the ways in which both nations communicate are highly diverse.

To the American ear, Germans are painfully direct, critical and bold. To the German eye, Americans are brash, outspoken and arrogant. Navigating the delicate balance between a positive understanding of culturally embedded communication styles has been my life’s work.

Add in a few children to the mix, and you’ve got yourself a challenge. Which values should we revere? Which should we ignore? How do we find the paste that holds our family together?

We found it at the pet store yesterday.

Ever since my daughter’s friend buried her treasured hamster, Speedy, we have been in tense negotiations about a family pet. For weeks, nay months, we debated about the merits of a Hohlbaum hamster. We toyed with the idea of getting a few turtles, which, upon further investigation, proved to be complicated since we don’t live at the lip of the Amazon. A Germanic climate might leave the poor things stone cold, and we already have our hands full with two finnicky children. Pampering a tortoise didn’t seem like a good idea after all.

Yesterday was the Promised Day. Come hell or high water, we were going to purchase the animal of our dreams. Chatting with a friend on the phone that morning, I came to realize hamsters are nocturnal animals.

“They bite, they’re squirrely, and they die after two years. Don’t do it,” my wise friend advised. She suggested getting two guinea pigs instead.

After school, we piled into the car. On the way, we got lost, then found our way to the only pet store within a 25-mile radius. We marched to the guinea pig pen and immediately fell in love with two of the furriest, beady-eyed guinea pigs alive. After seeing the look on my children’s faces, I filled my arms with guinea pig food, bedding, special water, and treats. We bought the biggest cage ever. I even volunteered my debit card to the cashier with a scandalous grin on my face. She wished us luck with the animals, then added, “And it looks like your mom is going to have the most fun!”

In the short 24 hours we have had our new progeny, we have built a race track, a teepee out of bamboo, and have stroked, cajoled, cooed and loved these little beings like no tomorrow.

It looks like our family narrative has been captured by two rodents. Lea is the shy one. And yes, Speedy is the other.

Book Review: Locker Room Diaries

Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth about Women, Body Image, and Re-Imagining the „Perfect“ Body by Leslie Goldman

ISBN: 978-0-7382-1042-1

Publisher: Da Capo ~ Lifelong Books

We women check out ourselves, and each other, more than men do. In other words, men don’t look at us the same way we look at ourselves. We scorn the pockets of cottage cheese clinging to our outer thighs; we pine for the rail-thin look of a runway model. We spank the treadmill with our Nikes in hopes of burning an adequate number of calories to feel even halfway human again after that bite of brownie at lunch. In our collective self-hatred, we perpetuate the negative mind talk for yet another generation of women with our locker room banter and our fitness club despair.

Negative body image is deeply rooted in US society. From T-shirts that read: “Does my butt look big?” to billboards of airbrushed models with unattainable figures, we seek approval from the body gods as if they were real.

Leslie Goldman warns us that they are not only not real, but they also reside strictly in our minds. Beware of those who lend voice to those gods, for they are false, harmful, and in some cases, lethal.

Locker Room Diaries is a witty, yet deeply poignant look inside the halls and walls of a Chicagoland fitness center locker room. We learn to sympathize with the author, whose own battle with anorexia and distorted perception of self, has marred her self-image in ways she powerfully handles throughout the book. Never sinking in self-pity, Ms. Goldman selects humor and self-reflection when treating the issue of fab versus flab.

“…from breast implants and mastectomy scars to bellies swollen from pregnancy and asses sagging from old age, every body part and every owner has a story to tell – and a lesson we can learn.” (page xv)

She traces the landscape of 36DD’s and, in her funniest moments, the shadow of “Southern hair” in various stages of removal. From Brazilian bikini waxes to ‘just the sideburns, please’, Ms. Goldman’s treatment of female vanity will leave you rolling on the floor for more.

Not all stories are funny, however. There is the fifty-six year-old exercise maniac whose ‘piano legs’ will never find the slimmness she desires; or the dinosaurian anorexic in her mid-thirties whose lengthy spinal cord resembles gum balls. Women are mostly portrayed as disliking some aspect of their physical appearance; but there are a resfreshing few sprinkled throughout the book who could care less. Most of the latter are immigrant women who work at the gym and do not actually work out there. I was left to wonder if the locker room only offers a one-sided view of women’s corporeal understanding. Most women who go to gyms want to improve some aspect of their physical selves.

Nonetheless, this book provided a wonderful shift into a more positive view of my own body image. I joined the gym while reading it. Each time I go, I thank myself for the love I am giving my body, which is indeed merely the house of our higher, more spiritual selves.