How to Prepare for Becoming a Parent

A little levity... I didn't author this, I received it as an email, and thought it was so funny I would share.

Lesson 1. Go to the grocery store. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2. Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their: methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and allowing their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3. To discover how the nights will feel...walk around the living room from 5 PM to 10 PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds with a radio tuned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. At 10 PM, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep. Get up at 12 AM and walk around the living room again until 1. Set the alarm for 3 AM. As you can't fall back to sleep, get up at 2 AM and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45 AM. Get up at 3 AM when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4 AM. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

Lesson 4. Can you stand the mess children make? To find out.... smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flower bed. Then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5. Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems. Buy an octupus and a small bag made out of loose mesh. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6. Forget the BMW and go for the mini-van. And don't expect to leave it out in the driveway all spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a dime. Stick it into the CD player. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Put big globs of ketchup in between the seats and the doors. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There. Perfect.

Lesson 7. Go to the grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full grown goat is excellent.) If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, don't even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8. Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half of the Cheerios are gone. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air. You are now ready to feed a nine-month old baby.

Lesson 9. Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'Mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy' with an occasional crescendo to the level of a super sonic jet engine is required.) Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 10. Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt-sleeve, or elbow as you play the mommy tape mentioned above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult when a child is in the room.

Let's celebrate each other, work can wait!

Life is important. Families are important. Let's not forget, in our haste to live these busy lives we've created to take the time to stop and remember someone who was important in your life.
Recently I spoke to someone who recounted a story for me about her friend's mother-in-law dying and how her friend was feeling really overwhelmed by being pulled in the direction of her family and falling behind in her work. The lady who died was dying of cancer, and it was one of those things where any day could have been her last for about two and a half weeks. She lived out of state, so she and her husband were packing up their kids to go to Tennessee, juggling their work demands and their childrens' attendance in school for a couple of weeks.
Then the mother-in-law passed and it was another week of the funeral preparations and ceremony. My friend's friend finally returned home with her family and she was exhausted and drained. Her family had suffered a big loss, but life goes on, and she needed to get her work caught up.
I am trying to make the point of putting things in perspective of importance. I am not saying this lady didn't do a good job -- she did -- she did make the effort, she was there, with her whole family to say goodbye to her mother-in-law. But the fact that her work was weighing on her and she was torn, rather than giving a big occasion like this the attention it deserved seems sad to me.
A person died. She was important. She raised this lady's husband. She was the grandmother to her children. Yet, because of all of the other balls hanging over her head, most especially her work, the passing of the person who had shaped her husband and was an intricate part of her family's make up today, had to be rushed through and gotten over with so she could get back to work?
That seems like a high price to me.
Can't work wait just a little bit longer? It is just work, after all. It's not like someone's going to die if you don't keep up with it for a week or two. Oh wait, someone did die, perhaps their passing should be noted and their life celebrated.
I was reading the book, Awareness by Anthony DeMello. He talks about how some of the people from his country of origin, India, work so hard for so little money a day. They work, have something to eat, go to sleep then get up and do it all over again. Sounds like a sad life?
He compared it to the lives we lead here in the United States, and makes the point that it's not so different. Our salaries are larger, so maybe we can eat out. Perhaps we can afford to buy a car, and a house, and go on a cruise when we want to, but then we, too, return to the same life of work, something to eat, sleep and get up and do it all over again.
I am not saying your job is not important. As stated, it puts food on your family's table, pays for your car and house, maybe you even help people in your job. But let's not be so focused on the job, that we miss out on life. On celebrating the passing of someone we loved. The work will be there waiting for us when we get back.