And Now I Go On a Rant -Again

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Eileen

Now this note now proudly hangs on our "Look What I Did!" wall at home. It's a confidence builder, for sure.

I became THAT parent a while ago. I can’t believe I did this and waited to post because I had to be sure I wanted to go public with my actions.

Well, here goes:

M1 called from school, “Mom. I forgot (my project) at home. Can you bring it to school for me?”

Deer in the headlights.

Here’s what ran through my head as I froze on the other end of the phone: He’d worked on the project last night. I’d offered constructive criticism and forced him to work a little harder. He did the project all on his own. He did a good job and he was proud of himself. I’d patted myself on the back for not assisting him at all in the process. (I’m not THAT kind of mom. You can spot those projects a mile away.) I was exactly the kind of parent I wanted to be…last night.

Today’s another day.

Here’s where I got stuck: He was working with another student on this project. Others were counting on him for their grade.

Ugh.

“You know I shouldn’t do this, but I will.”

Commence kicking myself for the next three hours. Last night I wasn’t THAT parent. Today I became THAT parent.

Sh**.

I took the project to school with a note attached reading “For the irresponsible student, M1.” I walked into the office proclaiming, “I’m here to drop this off for my son and I promise to all of you sitting here I will NEVER do this again.” The folks sitting there gave me a look like they’d heard that one before.

I proceeded to the Student Services desk -the area set aside in the office for these sorts of things. The school employee working behind the desk read the note attached to the project and asked, “You want this attached when he picks this up?” She looked surprised and also a bit appalled at my parenting tactics. (I recognize this look, unfortunately.)

“Yep.”

I left the project behind and walked out. Kicking myself all the way to the car.

I realized I should have added this to the bottom of the note: “From his Enabling Mother”.

Shaming my son into changing his behavior is absolutely counter-productive. I needed to own my part in this process. I said yes, when I should have said no.

We discussed this entire situation when M1 got home. And I wrote my addition down at the bottom of the note. (He brought the note home with him because he thought it was funny and wanted to put it up on our Brag Wall. I love that kid.)

He also told me what happened when he picked up his project. The woman behind the Student Services counter told him something like, “Your mom is grumpy!” He defended me to her saying, “No she’s not. I shouldn’t have called her.” RIGHT ON! M1 stuck up for me and owned his actions. THAT’S MY BOY!

He knows I won’t help him like this again. He’ll need to figure out a way to fix his problem on his own next time. It’s not about me being mean, or grumpy or shaming him. It’s about him learning responsibility.

For me, this presented one more chance for me to walk a mile in THOSE parent’s shoes. After walking in them, I realized (once again) they hurt when they kick me in the a** and I don’t like wearing them. But we all do it and I won’t judge the folks who do wear them. We’re all just doing the best we can with the tools we have available to us at the time.

Be warned, M2 and M3. Your brother and I are figuring this out and I’m learning right along with him how to navigate this road.

Onward!

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You Can Tell Me Where To Go -To Pledge-A-Post

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Eileen

Here's how I feel about all of you who read this blog. Thank you!

Back in April I made a promise to myself and my faithful readers (all six of you) that I would pledge $10.00 for every post I wrote this year. I promised I would tally up how many posts I wrote to come up with a total amount to donate (up to $500). I called the idea “Pledge-A-Post”. I hoped doing this would get me motivated to write here and my goal was to write once a week.

Yeah, that worked. (Sarcastica font.) I wrote only sixteen posts last year. Sheesh. It just didn’t happen.

What did happen is life: Taxi-ing, feeding, shopping, birthday-ing, traveling, painting, switching around rooms for the kids, more painting, wife-ing, basketball, soccer, hip hop class, cleaning, avoiding cleaning, running, PTA-ing, hiking, sleeping, snuggling, reading, aunt-ing, volunteering, remodeling, homework helping, gardening, sister-ing, eating, cooking, doing dishes, friend-ing, working, and mothering. It all happened. Lots and lots. Sometimes most of these things happened in one day.

I know. I know. Plenty of you do all of these things AND manage to post on your blogs every single day -and your blogs KICK A**. And you work, and cook, and clean, and sew, and grow your own food, and make your own bread, and have time to brush your teeth and comb your hair and wear clothes that match and don’t look like you slept in them. HOW IN THE HECK DO YOU DO THIS?!?!? I clearly don’t know.

You people are amazing. Any tips or advice on how I can be more like the folks who exist like that last paragraph will be gladly appreciated.

Anyway, I didn’t post here as much as I wanted, so I didn’t have as much money pledged as I wanted. But guess what? You’re not the boss of me (and I know you didn’t say you were) -and this is my blog and I can do whatever I want.

So I’m donating $500 to charity. And I’m saying it’s because I posted here AND on momcentral.com as a part of my Pledge-A-Post promise to myself. Because if you total up all those posts, I DID write a post at least once a week. So WAHOO!

Plus -here’s some really awesome news -I got a matching dollar amount. Stacy DeBroff gave me matching funds to add to my Pledge-A-Post total because she knows how much this process meant to me all year. So WAHOO…AGAIN!

This means I have a total of $750 to donate and YOU get to tell me where to go…and spend it. That’s right. My faithful readers, YOU get to help me decide.

So, tell me the non-profit organizations near and dear to your heart; share their links, share their stories and why you feel connected to them. You know I feel passionately about supporting survivors of suicide, progeria, Stand up for Skateparks, brain tumor research, Make-A-Wish, creating parks for kids to play in, heart health, cancer research, charities for and about kids, reading, and art therapy. What organizations do you feel passionately about and why?

No, I won’t donate to the Human Fund. Don’t ask. (Or you can ask, because that would be funny, but I won’t donate there.)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving -I’m so grateful to everyone who reads this blog and shares their thoughts with me. I’m grateful for my family and friends and have so many blessings in my life. While Pledge-A-Post didn’t get as huge as I envisioned back in April, I’m thankful for the chance to give and look forward to you helping me.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Blessings all around.

Posted in What I'm Talking About | 3 Comments

Time Travel at Cal Poly -Journalism 285

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Eileen

Don't they look thrilled they got to meet me? Yep, that's what I thought, too.

Too bad I couldn’t travel back in time to visit my twenty-one year old self. I’d tell her everything would all be okay. And I wouldn’t mean that phrase in a way that really says, “Your life is a complete mess right now, but I don’t know what else to say.” I’d mean it because it’s true. Everything is okay.

I got to prove this to myself when I visited my friend Dave Schermer’s Journalism 285 class at Cal Poly. I talked about my job with his class and it blew my mind. The job I have today as Chief Mom Connector of Mom Central is perfect for me and I love it. If my younger-self had known this was waiting for me twenty years after I finished college, I would have been  ecstatic.

When I sat in those chairs as a student, Social Media didn’t exist; neither did blogs, twitter, facebook, laptop computers, smart phones, or anything involving what I get paid to use every day. Talking with the class made me realize how much the world, and my own life, has changed since I attended Cal Poly.

As a quarter-long project, each student created a blog and writes posts based on certain assignments. Before I went in to the class I read each blog to get to know who I’d be talking with -and I loved seeing what they had to say. One blog had gorgeous photography, one posted about SLOtheStigma.org -an orgization I feel a personal connection with, another blogged about the homeless in SLO, and a student’s blog about her passion for travel made me wish I had more stamps in my passport. The students put their personal touch on their blogs and I felt a connection to each one of them.

The class paid attention (thank you), sometimes a few zoned out (that’s okay -I remember what it was like), and many asked questions (right on!). I got off topic, back on topic, got totally pitted (what the heck was that about?), and managed to say something that got quoted back to me in a tweet later in the day. (That feels pretty great, I have to admit.)

After class I continued the conversation with three students and I loved this extra time with them. I realized there was so much more I hadn’t told them; I remembered things I forgot to share.

"Graphic Communication". Yep. That's my old department.

I had to muddle through my twenties without a visit from future-me, but this week I got to travel back to a part of my past and see what I might have looked like sitting there in a classroom at Cal Poly. I got to talk about my job and how cool it is to work in Social Media. I saw those desks from the front of the classroom and it was amazing to look back on my journey of how I ended up there. Or here. You know what I mean.

Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Schermer and the students of Journalism 285. I loved talking with you and sharing about my career. Keep up the good work and learn as much from Mr. Schermer as you can. He is an excellent resource and teacher.

I’m not sure I made this point to all of you: It’s all going to be okay. I’m sure of it.

Onward!

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Hooray! It’s our 3d Panaversary!

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Eileen

A guest post by John.

Say Cheese!

Dear Panasonic,

Sometimes thank you just isn’t enough. How do you show appreciation to someone who changes your life in ways you could never have imagined? That their presence enhances everything you do and makes it better, easier and more fun than you thought possible? This question becomes even more difficult when there is not a single person to say this to, but an entire company.

Three years ago our family was chosen to be a Panasonic Living in HD family. (Click the links to read about our first and second year and the changes this program brought to our lives.) Today, we are no less astounded by what has happened to us than we were on the first day. If anything, we are more appreciative than ever.

Last year, we were given an upgrade to our Panasonic equipment. The good people at Panasonic had shown our neighborhood what 3D was going to look like the year before, and were now giving us the opportunity to share it with others in our home. Greg Harper came once again to install an incredible new 50″ 3D plasma television and a 3D blu-ray player. In addition, we were given a 3D video camera, and a new Lumix GH2 camera with a 3D lens.

Our world, which had been blown wide open in HD, changed drastically again with the addition of 3D. I know many people think 3D is a gimmick- that’s because they haven’t experienced it. We immediately realized what powerful tools we had in our hands and knew exactly what we wanted to do with them.

Thanks to our Panasonic 3D television and blu-ray player, our weekly Pizza Night has achieved new levels of awesome. Despite what you may have read elsewhere, the glasses are not a problem at all. We love putting on our glasses and sharing a movie every Friday night. They create a stereoscopic image with outstanding full HD clarity and enhace the movie experience. They do, however, keep us from multitasking while watching movies with the kids. This simple fact has returned us to the original intent of Pizza Night- be present with the family and share a movie. The boys love having friends over to experience the 3D on Pizza Night and we love that their friends want to be here.

3D video has enhanced our lives and our ability to make and create memories. We have taken our cameras to our children’s school events, on hikes through Arches National Park and Bryce Canyon, down ziplines through a pine forest and to a local animal preserve to film ourselves feeding elephants. Regular video would have captured the experience, 3D puts us back in the experience. We relive the elephant’s trunk reaching out to grab the carrot from our hands, passing under the delicate arch, seeing our child sing with his class; the video could not be more real. The 3D still photographs are even more amazing. The memories we capture of our children become dioramas, rather than simply flat images.

This summer, we took the 3D camera equipment to Eileen’s grandmother’s house. Her grandmother had passed away long ago and this was our first opportunity to bring our boys to the home where Eileen spent every Christmas and many weeks every summer. Our goal was to capture the house as she remembered it, 3D gave us that opportunity. We took 3D stills of everything- the gardens, the staircase, the view from the upstairs window in the room where Eileen and her sister had slept as children, the overhead light that she had stared at every night before falling asleep. These little things in a regular photograph inspire memories. In 3D, they provoke a more powerful, visceral reaction. It is no longer a picture of the view through the window, it IS the view through the window. Thanks to Panasonic and these 3D products, these memories are now frozen in time and (the illusion of) space forever.

We finally got to bring the boys to the house but, better yet, we brought the house back home with us.

We continue to be overwhelmed by the kindness of the people in the Panasonic community. We got to meet the engineering team from Japan who built our television and ask questions of them.  It was an amazingly enriching experience for our boys to meet and ask questions of the people who designed the television they loved to watch. The team wanted to hear our opinion of their work, and listened when we suggested improvements or upgrades. We even went with them to our local Costco to answer their questions about marketing and packaging. It was an honor to have our opinions be so valued.

The many other families still active on the LiHD site have proven themselves to be wonderfully supportive and generous. They share our Panasonic experience and consistently inspire us by how they use their technology. One of the “3D” Living in HD families who lives in our state, (Timnevan on the LiHD site) take amazing photographs and video. They came down to spend time with us, let us pick their brains about all things photography and helped me get my G2 to take the amazing pictures it does! We’ve Skyped with them via our television and ejnoy them as part of our Panasonic family. We have had dinner with another LiHD family, the Nielsons (but unfortunately didn’t get to join them on their family vacation). We haven’t managed to pull off our LiHD family reunion yet, but we’re not done with that dream!

Thank you isn’t enough to show the appreciation for how our lives have changed. In the past three years, Panasonic has taught us that the purpose of technology is to enhance our lives. When you have the right tool for the job, everything is easier and better. Since we became a Living in HD family, we have had opportunities to travel, give to others, meet people, and share our lives. Our Panasonic products are the right tools to capture the moments that connect us to others.

We are honored to have been selected to use your products. We are honored to associate ourselves with your mission, and we will continue to share our experiences with everyone we can. It’s the least we can do for a company that has given us technology with the ability to open our world.

Sincerely,

The Calandro Clan

LiHD family #39

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