OH NO! WordPress.org doesn’t want us to be friends! JK… kinda.

Hi everyone.  If you are receiving this email it is because I have switched my blog hosting from .com to .org and with that, all of your subscriptions and emails have been erased.  Maybe this is a easy way out, AND I GET IT!  I too, have decided to opt out of emails from time to time.  If that’s the case, then thank you for reading and following up to this point, I’ve been honored to rant to you : )

BUT if you choose that you DO want to keep living, learning, laughing and loving through all this chaos with me, please head back over to my website… same address… www.doyouhaveajungleprincess.com and click the follow button AND/ or sign up via email!  I truly hope you keep on keeping’ on with me because you have allowed me to vent, cry, laugh and talk without hesitation!  Plus I think you’ll really like the new format I have… Lord knows its a learning process for this girl.  Thank you in advance!!!

Don’t Forget to Laugh,

Krysta

Kindness of a Stranger, Strength of Yourself

Yesterday got off to a swinging start.  Running late at 8am to meet an installation technician at Lazy Mon, I knew I had to get gas or I would never make it to the bar at all.  Hoping on all hopes that I wouldn’t run out of gas before getting to the station, I headed out of town to spend over $5 a gallon… yea, that’s right.  Keep all of the posts on Facebook coming about how cheap gas is in the States right now, I REALLY LOVE seeing them.  Not.

Where was I?  Oh, right.

So, there I was, almost at the gas station and sure enough I ran out of gas.  Taking it for what it was and not freaking out, I grab the empty gallon container out of the trunk and walk the half mile to grab some “get there gas.”

Sure enough, upon arriving at the gas station on foot, one of my not-so-favorite local “pharmacists” is pulling up on his moped and laughingly asks if I want a ride.  Of course he already knew the answer, but I politely declined.  He laughs and rides off.  I curse him in my head and smile.

Moving on.

I grab my $5 gallon of gas and head back to my truck.  It’s not a far walk and I actually don’t mind it with the clouds clearing and sun shining over head.  Walking along the road, I mentally check my list of what I need to fill my tank.

Empty water bottle. Check.

Stick. Check.

Gallon of gas. Check.

Knife to cut open bottle.  GOOSE EGG.

Being resourceful, I figure I can make a hole with my keys and then rip it open.  Clearly, this is not my first rodeo running out of gas.

I get back to my car and start to assemble my goods while not being side swept, when a random older man zooms past on his motorcycle.  I notice that he sees me, passes me and then turns around.  When he comes back he asks if I need help and I ask “tienes un cuchillo?” Do you have a knife?

The man sees the bottle in my hand, says something incomprehensible and zooms past me in the direction he originally came.  Figuring he was trying to help, I wait a beat for his return.  A minute later he comes back with a cut 2 liter bottle, grabs a stick and like a well-oiled machine we work together to pour the gas into the car.  Mission accomplished, I close the tank, thank him and without another word save for “con gusto” he jumps on his bike and leaves.  No strings.  No expectations.  No lingering.  Just good old fashioned help.

And to be honest… I didn’t need his help.  I had already done the “hard” part of walking a mile or so to and from the gas station with the gas.  I essentially had the tools I needed or at least the creativity to make it happen.  But there is an adrenaline rush that comes with both receiving and giving help to a stranger for the sole purpose of doing good.  The rush that comes with truly selfless acts and glimpses of a positive society.  Who was I to deny either one of us of that rare luxury?

The point of my story is two fold.  For one, we are embarking on a new year in less than 10 hours and resolutions aside, let’s just do selfless acts.  Let’s help people for no other reason than to help people.  You don’t have to help someone every single day, but most days or even some days can change a lot of people’s lives… even if it is just BRIGHTENING someone’s day after they ran out of gas on the side of the road.

And the other point of my story is to the ladies.  Often we are stuck in a world between trying to show how strong and independent we are while being beautiful and soft.  I once had a wise woman tell me that I didn’t have to be so scared to let other people help me- that it didn’t make me weak.  I think she was right.  I can be strong and beautiful, independent and ladylike.  I didn’t need that man’s help, but I took it.  Allow yourself to be treated like a lady, but be prepared like a warrior.  Either way, you’re good to go.

Happy New Year to everyone.  Love your family, enjoy your friends, laugh a lot, love often, show kindness, show gratitude, be strong, be soft, be accepting of help and offer it whenever possible.  The simplest of gestures can turn out to be grander than you think.

 

Epic Parenting Fail: Lesson Well Learned About the Letter “K”

Friends, every now and then you screw up in such an innocent but epically bad way that you can’t help but to laugh at yourself.  With all of the sadness lately, the stress over the holidays, the protests and injustices happening around the world, let’s take a quick second to laugh.

Any parent that is teaching letters to their child knows the first letter of their first name is typically the go to starter.  Miss Kennedy can point out a “K” like no ones’ business, but write it?? Not so much.  So while at the beach this morning,  I thought what better way than to write our letters in the sand… and remember repetition is key!

HEADS UP TO ANY PARENTS TEACHING THE LETTER “K”:  Repetition is actually not key… it’s mistakenly racist.

There I am writing the letter “K” in the sand, 3 times, and gleefully repeating to Kennedy “KKK KKK KKK” while a nice black family literally sits feet from me, playing in the sand.  Thankfully, I quickly realized my mistake, laughed out loud at the innocent error… let’s be real, I’m clearly not racist: insert half black child… and erased the letters with my foot (but not before taking a quick pic for evidence.)

OH MAN… what a parenting fail. Oops.

It’s OK everyone, you can laugh… it doesn’t make you a racist.  Lesson for the day… aside from not repeating the KKK in public… it’s ok to laugh at yourself and your royal screw ups.  Just fix your mistakes… or erase the harmless evidence.  Have a great weekend everyone- smile, laugh, be kind and enjoy : )

ps: I KNOW Nancy would have gotten a kick out of this… enjoy the laugh up there girlfran.

All Dogs Go to Heaven: Facing the Elephant in the Room

39 days it took to face the elephant in the room.

39 days ago (which was 2 days ago when I initially started writing this post, umm HELLO LIFE!)  we had to let our 12 year old German Shepherd go to her final rest.  And with only her son Bentley left behind the big bag of dog food began to stare at me from all angles of the room… every time I walked by.

I guess everyone has their way of dealing with losing their beloved pets.  Everyone deals differently.  For me, the entire week of letting Gemini go was devastating.  The 2 days prior, while she was at the vet and having tests done, knowing we were leading to an unfortunate decision were just as hard as making the decision to let her go.  Being there in Gemini’s final moments, her head resting in my hands, choking on tears… there are just some things you won’t ever forget.  The next morning, Abasi and I quietly looked for a place to bury her along the coast, high enough from any water and along the path we use for our runs.  Together and without speaking, we dug a hole, placed her in gently and gave her a toy of Kennedy’s and 2 coconuts to hopefully grow a tree from.  We filled in the sand, placed flowers on her grave and said a prayer.  And really, that was that.  We cried and we hugged.  And that pretty much happened the rest of the week… crying and hugging, crying and hugging.

She always loved the beach… rest easy girl ❤

 

Honestly, the memories we have with her, the pictures, the now empty dog collar hanging from our rearview mirror, and the other Shepherds running around town were nothing compared to seeing this seemingly bottomless bag of food.  I was praying to buy another bag.  For years, we bitched and moaned about how much food the dogs ate and joked that they better find jobs to help pitch in.  It felt like every single week I was running last minute to the store to grab the huge bag of food to feed our horse sized (slight exaggeration) dogs that would be gone in the blink of an eye.  But now, the hardest part of dealing with letting Gemini go was having to walk past a bag of food every day that seemed to have no where to go.

Of course Bentley was eating…  Bentley eats everything.  But still for 39 days I felt like I was holding my breath until I had to buy more.  The first bag since Gemini.  The first bag without Gemini.

And as simple as that, I feel like a weight has been lifted from me.  It may seem small and insignificant but it’s as if a page has turned and now we can continue writing the rest of our story… always with Gemini in our prelude.  I don’t have any other beautiful or transcendent words to say about this.  It was just a bag of smelly dog food… but I feel better.

And so, I just want to end by reiterating something I wrote the day we buried her, which I feel she deserves to have re-said:

“Yesterday we had to say goodbye to a huge part of our hearts and our family. Gemini was a beautiful dog and from day one of bringing Kennedy home, she hovered near her, watching her. When Kennedy got older she would nudge Kennedy away from places or areas she shouldn’t be crawling or walking to. We know she isn’t in pain anymore, and I suppose love is enduring a pain yourself so that she can be free of it. Thank you Gemini for being an amazing little puppy that allowed Abasi to understand the first true feelings of tenderness for caring for another life. Thank you for so effortlessly loving me when I came into the picture. Thank you for giving us Bentley who is the silliest dog in the world and looks like a horse. I promise to take extra good care of him now when he will need you most. Thank you for taking this adventure with us to Costa Rica, you walked the lands of many countries, more than a lot of other dogs. And thank you for always seeming to have a protective spirit around Kennedy. I know you will still “shepherd” her and all of us in the right direction. Dogs aren’t just dogs, they are family, and we will love and miss you for the rest of our time. Sleep easy. RIP Gemini.”

 

Stop Drinking the Hate Juice: Learning to Celebrate Another Mother’s Efforts

WOW, can you hear that? No, you can’t because it’s called silence. The pounding and jackhammering in my head has finally subsided. And now that the mini construction demons are done sandblasting their way through my skull and my nose has returned to actually smelling things, I am happy to say I’m BACCKK!! But with me come my thoughts and opinions from the last couple of fog-brained and drugged days of consciousness. And like my main man Abasi loves to say, “opinions are like a&#holes… everyone’s got ‘em and they all stink!”

And trust me, my following thoughts might cause a stink…

2 days ago I read an article in the NY Post, by Karol Markowicz, that had been going around a few of my friends’ newsfeeds. It was titled “Modern Moms Looking for Perfection in All the Wrong Places” and even before I read it, I felt my cheeks beginning to tingle. Upon reading it, my initial response was indeed… DAMN! That stings!

I felt like I had been personally slapped in the face by the author. Why was I so directly offended by a person I didn’t even know? For starters, it could have been because as I sat there feeling snubbed and sorry for myself, I could literally see from the corner of my eye, the finger painted t-shirt Kennedy had just finished drying on the table. Gut punch delivered.

And then, clearly I had sat there frozen with frustration for too long, because as if to finish me off, my screen saver mockingly cascaded pictures of Kennedy’s 2^nd birthday party, Minnie Mouse themed all over my laptop… do-it-yourself Minnie ears and all. Upper cut… call the match.

At first I was annoyed because it felt like I was personally being told… “You try to hard.” “Stop faking perfection!” Trust me, ain’t no one faking perfection over here. Like you might have read in my first blog post, “The Perfect Moment to Share,” I believe everyone is entitled to beautiful moments and should show them off. They are your perfect moments, be proud of them. But I’ll be damned if I act like I have it all together.

I will be the first one to admit that Kennedy initially started going to “school” (daycare) at a year and half, BECAUSE I NEEDED TIME to get back to being me. To have time to work out or do yoga or go to the freaking beach without chasing a toddler. Or watch NCIS: Los Angeles uninterrupted. OR JUST TO BREATHE. I needed those 4 hours a day, 5 days a week to remember I was a human being. Doesn’t sound so perfect, does it? I could care less, I feel great, she has friends, learns things daily and we’re all better for it.

And that homemade t-shirt, finger painted to perfection… you bet your ass that’s going on Instgram, but wanna know the real reason behind it? You think I just want to expose my daughter to “the arts?”   Yea sure, that too. But what it really does is gives us something to do for 20 minutes a day in one spot. When we’re done, I can figure out what to do for the next 13 hours and 40 minutes of “awake time.” Cut me some slack if I’m proud enough of the finished product that came from my “toddler control/ mama sanity methods.” Ps: We painted a mug the next day, and I love that too…

And what the hell is this about the “old days?” Do we really want to go back to a time when we would just throw our kids in front of a TV dinner and walk away to shake up some martinis? Believe you me, I’m 27 years old and my mother had a home cooked meal on the table for us EVERY NIGHT of the week… and still had time for a cocktail. Because she’s awesome. And so awesome in fact, that this trend of “newly themed birthdays” must really be holding on something fierce because I had themed birthdays and homemade carousel birthday cakes in the 80’s and 90’s. That’s a hell of a “fad” if you ask me.

You know what we, as a society, did do 30 or more years ago? Smoke during pregnancies, drive without seat belts and use minimal to no sunscreen. If you ask me, thank God we’ve made some discoveries and adaptations to our parenting abilities.

But then I woke up, after 2 days of bed-ridden contemplation and as the last cloud drifted from my refreshed brain, I realized why I was truly pissed off at this article.  BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT!

In a world where war, poverty, starving children and rapists run rampant, why in the world are we accusing from one mother to another of trying too hard or trying to live up to something we’re not. Is the fact that I made a Minnie Mouse shaped cake to match the plates and the balloons and the invitations really that big of a deal? Is the fact that I prefer home cooked meals IF possible over take out or processed, something that really just means I’m “over thinking parenting?” HELL NO!  It’s simply my choice.

There are women who beat their children, drop their children off in dumpsters and do things to them that as a woman and a mother, I am unprepared to type. You know these monsters. We all read about them in our every day news. Yet, instead of congratulating another mother on her job well done we simply scoff and assume she’s fakin’ it till she makes it.

Shame on us.

Shame on us for not lifting one another up. For not recognizing that every parent and specifically mother is on her own journey and experience and only doing AS GOOD AS SHE KNOWS HOW. Shame on us for not supporting and celebrating the accomplishments and victories other mothers have, as much as we punish and chastise the mothers that do evil. Shame on us for shaming other mothers.

To be fair, I do agree with Mrs. Markowicz when she says, “Make sure your child’s life is fun and meaningful, instead of pretty and picturesque.” Truer words have never been spoken.  I want nothing more in this entire world than for my daughter to be healthy, happy and full of love.  But instead of holding anything at all in contempt of another person, just celebrate what they do well and move on. And maybe at some point you remember that your friend Susie Homemaker is fantastic at making centerpieces, call on her for help and guidance. In return and gratitude, offer your services at something you excel at, whatever it may be. If we were a society more interested in supporting not ONLY the children of our future, but the people raising our futures, we may be pleasantly surprised at the examples we demonstrate and the outcomes from it.

Personally, I enjoy making Halloween costumes, painting and cooking. They are some of my super mama strengths. I lack in patience and the ability to listen to the same God-awful cartoons day in and day out. I don’t believe in giving my toddler a bath every single day. I am a vegetarian, but I let her eat meat if it means she will eat SOMETHING! I am not perfect, but I am trying. I am doing the very best that I can in the journey that I am on, with the tools that I have available to me. And the one universal tool happens to be love. We all have it, we all use it, some to open different doors than others, but we all have it. Recognize your path, respect that someone else’s journey is different and at all cost, just lift one another up towards the common goal of loving and protecting our children and you have succeeded.

Rant over.