multi-hyphenated-me

Whether we’re discussing parenting, leadership or every day life, walking the talk is essential to your credibility.  Parents, leaders and everyone should be accountable to their words and do what they say they are going to do.  Sounds simple, yet daily we stumble.  We’re human.  Shit happens.  I get it, though it is important that you learn from your mistakes.

As the result of my husband’s detention hall experience, known as J.U.G, Justice Under God, in Jesuit high school where he had to write essays with an ever changing assigned number of words, in our house, if our kids “forget” to do a homework assignment, bring something to school or home, or choose not to do extra credit assignments (our rule is to always do extra credit for the practice or the extra points, mandatory, no exceptions), or the like, they must answer to J.U.G.  I think I’m being lenient assigning 10 behavior altering sentences instead of, say, a 500 word essay.  They are tortured at the mere thought of writing sentences.  J.U.G. is a powerful three letter word in our home.

These are not easy, “I will not forget my saxophone” sentences.  We like to focus on the positive habit forming sentence “To be a better person takes practice; moreover, you need to have all resources available with which to practice, including my saxophone.”  Ten times, please.  Effective?  You betcha.  Each kid will write sentences at least once during the school year, rarely but occasionally twice, never three times.

Before anyone goes crazy on me for being a mean mom (I already have a badge, fyi), they know all about J.U.G. before the big day arrives.  My kids also get one freebie, one warning that J.U.G. is next and BAM!  Third times the charm, start writing.  All is fair in love, school and war.

Unfortunately, I have smart children.  They turned on me this year and asked what I would do if I forgot to put lunch money in their accounts, washed their clothes, bought what they needed or, you know, the occasional forgot to pick you up from school.  Damn it, they’re on to me!  Of course I thought “Hurray my kids are brilliant!”  But yo’ momma is one step wiser. Silly kids forgot that I love to write!  If they accepted their fate with J.U.G. (without fits or fights), I would agree to write 500 words per school day to show them that it can be done.  Done deal.

For you, dear reader, this means, after a sporadic blogging year, my blog is back in full force.  Monday through Friday, I will post 500 words each day on a wide variety of topics, but my usual favorites, me, my kids, gardening, cooking and books and then back to me.  As much as I love to write, this could be a challenge.  Thankfully their are plenty of school holidays!

This post is a warm-up run, to get me back in the game.  Muscles stiff, brain slow, and what is it about sentence structure I’m supposed to know?

505.  That’s how you walk the talk. J.U.G, what?