Potatoes...

"Do you have potatoes in your ears?  How many times do I have to say it!?!?"

No, who would have potatoes in their ear?  What a ridiculous phrase.

My mother use to say this to us, exasperated from repeating whatever it was two or three... or [God-forbid], four times.  But every time, it sounded completely absurd.

I have been watching my niece and nephew this summer (9 and 12). And throughout the summer there are certain things that I've been noticing about myself.  Most recently, for example, the kids have been saying "what?" and "huh?", what seems like constantly..... And my response (after grinding my teeth and taking a breath to not be as annoyed) was, "you need to clear out the potatoes out of your ears!" .... Ridiculous.

So a few weeks ago the question/prompt was to talk about one way you are like your mother (my question actually).  Jenkins and I both agreed we could write a book about this, and picking one was a bit of a challenge.  But I think really, every day I am realizing more and more ways I am like my mom.

Besides the potatoes, there are quite a few embarrassing ways that I'm like my mother.  For example, we both like stuff, and coupons.  And because of that, clutter is a constant battle to keep at bay.  We also always have a to-do list as long as our arms, which we have a problem focusing our efforts on to check things off the list.  We also are pretty good at loosing track of time/being late for things because we thought maybe we could get one more thing into the time before we were meant to be somewhere.

But there are pretty awesome ways I'm like my mom too.  We both have dreams of all the things we want to do some day [go back to Europe, hike/camp certain places, etc], we like to volunteer to make the world a better place and to love people in ways the world doesn't always.  We like to talk.  We, for the most part, don't care what the world does think about us [see my mom's crazy cowboy hat that she wears EVERYWHERE], we both have a bachelors degree, and we both like dressing up in general :).

My mom has always been so supportive of me, of my adventuring, of my not exactly job-secure degree choice, of my moving to other states, and the list goes on.

My mom's a bad ass.  I hope to someday achieve her bad-ass-ness [smile].

-maike rinaye-

Oh, I also look like my mom, I think I might have failed to mention that part of likeness :)