Mommin' It Up!

January 30, 2013

Green Smoothie Love

Topics have been a little heavy around Mommin’ It Up this week, so today I want to talk about something happy…

Green smoothies! Woo!

I came across green smoothies about a year ago, and while I loved them, I had a hard time figuring out the best way to make them fit into my lifestyle – I am always running out the door in the morning, and chopping fruits and vegetables doesn’t work well with that scenario. A few weeks ago, though, I decided to make packages of the ingredients and freeze them, and it’s worked out really well. I grab a couple of them out of the freezer every morning, run hot water over them, and blend them up. Voila, breakfast and lunch!

Green smoothie recipes are all over the internet, but my go-to site is IncredibleSmoothies.com. I like them best with just fruits and vegetables – no milk/yogurt/whatever. Dr. Oz also has one, but he and I aren’t on speaking terms after the $25 bottle of raspberry ketones he told me to buy didn’t melt fat off my body. Anyway, my very favorite is spinach, apple, pear, banana, and celery.

Try it! You’ll love it, I promise!

January 25, 2013

Death is complicated.

This week has been an educational experience for me. We lost my grandpa on Tuesday, and the days between then and now have been filled with making arrangements and buying funeral clothes and ordering flowers and locating paperwork and calling long-lost family and friends.

To be honest, all the things that have to be done when someone dies works out well for a process-driven person like me. He wasn’t gone for two hours before I wanted to be DOING something. So I googled “things to do when someone dies” and made myself some lists.

I keep thinking, though, about what a freaking nightmare this would be under other circumstances. Grandpa was old and very ill, and while we are all sad to see him go, we all consider his peaceful passing a blessing. His funeral was pre-arranged and paid for, his assets had been relinquished to pay for his nursing home care long ago. There’s not much to do – but there’s a ton of things to do.

I can only imagine how awful all this would be if we were in complete shock and utterly grief-stricken.

Death is complicated. And it sucks.

So, um, happy Friday?!?

January 23, 2013January 23, 2013

A Heart of Gold.

My grandpa passed away yesterday.

He had been fighting pneumonia since Sunday, and fighting dementia for many years.

I feel like we lost him a long time ago.

But this is it, time to google “logistical things to do when someone dies” and say our final goodbyes.

My very first memory involves my grandpa – my sister was born when I was 21 months old, and she spent a week at Dayton Children’s Hospital in the NICU. There was a slide there, red and white if I recall, and I remember my grandpa catching me at the bottom.

He’s in just about all of my memories after that.

Sitting in the stands at my basketball games, popping out of the crowd to snap a picture as we marched by with the band, making sure to rinse the freezer burn off my Pudding Pop before slathering it with peanut butter.

When I was very young – probably 7 or 8 – my grandma and I were talking about Grandpa, and what she told me has stuck with me all these years.

“He has a heart of gold, and he’d do anything in the world for you girls.”

She was right on both accounts.

Goodbye, Grandpa. We’ll miss you.