Giving Advice vs. Sharing Experiences. Why Settle for Someone Else's Happy Meal When You Could have your Own Caviar & Filet Mignon?

My house growing up was quite the neighborhood spectacle.  We grew up in a 1960’s ranch-style, located at 970 Gest Drive, in Mountain View, CA. (AKA Google Town, but it wasn’t Google Town back then), and my dad was kind of a “projects guy.”  Translation: there was always some kind of action or transition going on at our house.  Various undertakings across the years occurred:  For example, our 1979 Buick Station Wagon sported its’ handsome grey primer for the better part of two years while waiting to be painted.  Equally entertaining was the time when my dad had blown insulation holes into the stucco of the exterior of our home resulting in many months of a polka-dot painted house that looked like a Pinterest-Project gone wrong.
 
But one of my dad’s most creative masterpieces to this day was the time he tried to figure out a quick way to kill our lawn and junipers in the front yard.  Now, dear readers, this was before we had the internet.  So without the ability to consult the web, my dad concocted a double dosage plan of attack to kill every living thing in our front yard (and possibly the entire neighborhood.)  He first doused our property with gasoline, and when that did not work at the speed which my dad had hoped for, he next decided to add a second layer…. Anti-freeze.  Sure enough, the combination was enough to annihilate every growing plant in the front yard.  For months I promise you, it looked as if a radioactive glow was reflecting off the remaining dirt.  There was a smell wafting from our yard that I can only equate to a chemical plant.  It’s amazing I’ve even been able to have children; the way our yard smelled was enough to singe the hairs of my nostrils, and probably would have made me sterile if I were to roll around sans HazMat suit in the remains of the area formerly known as our lawn.

I was relaying this true tale to my friend who, after composing herself from dying laughing said, “So, why didn’t your dad just quit watering your lawn? Eventually the grass would die.”  Um, yeah.  So that’s another alternative I guess.  This comes from my friend who, like me, will valet park just so she doesn’t have to walk too far in her high heels.  You could say we look for the easy way. Yep, we’re the ones circling the gym parking lot for 20 minutes waiting to find that ever-elusive parking space up front… right by the door of the gym, people.  Seriously.
 
We all have our own way of doing things.  There is an old, somewhat gross saying who anyone under age 30 has most likely not heard before that goes, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”   Another similar and less nasty saying is “To each their own.”  Things are relative.  I find it interesting when someone starts a sentence with “*Normally*………” and then the person continues to speak with authority on something that they’re trying to have come across as truth or common knowledge, but it’s actually just a viewpoint or opinion.
 
I’ve been asked a lot why I don’t give advice in my blog.  Advice on little life hacks I’ve found running a big family, large family organization tips, “traveling with kids” ideas, etc.  So here’s why I don’t give advice….shhhhh lean in close.  I do not believe in dispensing advice because all I have is my own experience.  All I have is what has worked (and what has failed miserably) for me this far.  I’m happy to share some specific piece of my (limited) experience, if you ask me directly.  But I have a real issue, one that actually should probably be addressed, with people who write articles and blogs with titles like: “Top 10 Ways to Achieve Happiness” or “Do this Every Day and Watch your Marriage Change”  “The Most Successful Way to Parent Toddlers.”  So, like, according to whom?  The author?  A team of scientists?  I’ve actually never met anyone who was like, “You know, I read this blog on how to organize my sock drawer and it changed my life!”  Boo.  Nope. Not me, anyway, and who knows, I could be in the minority- Lord knows I don’t get out much. But hey- by all means, you do you! Fundamentally, though, I don’t believe I have the answers for you.  (Nor should I.) I don’t even have answers for me.  And here’s a news flash, how about there being NO answers.  How about just being at peace with myself and freefalling into the mystery of life?
 
And may I just say to the people who so kindly say things to me like “you’re amazing” and “I don’t know how you do it”, I want to thank you for those generous, yet erroneous words.  I want you to know that I have help, (at least I do now on my second round of kids).  And when I don’t have help, I usually have experiences like the one I had a couple weeks ago in the Kelsey Creek Farm parking lot.  Had there been security cameras, you would have seen me in a full out, knock-down drag out WWF wrestling match with an infant stroller.  I was cursing like a sailor, dropping F-bombs and sweating and I think at one point I even drop-kicked it.  I could NOT for the LIFE of me figure out how to collapse that thing.  I have had probably a dozen different strollers in my time…. Singles, infant-seat “combos”, doubles, jog strollers (singles AND doubles of those) and we even had a triple stroller for awhile which was about as easy to maneuver as an Airbus A380 on an aircraft carrier.  Anyway, I can honestly say this new stroller totally defeated me.  Completely perplexed and pissed, I remembered someone telling me they watched a YouTube video to learn how to install a carseat.  So there I was, watching a YouTube video in the parking lot, trying to fold this Eff-ing thing.  No success.  So in the end, I just surrendered and threw the entire unfolded stroller into the back of my new special-order 9 seater SUV and sped off in a cloud of frustration.  So.  The moral of the story is maybe you should think twice before consulting me on any parenting problems.  I’m about as useful as a trap door in a lifeboat.
 
Hear me when I say I’m all about having some trusted advisors to bounce thoughts and ideas off of.  I am like the question maniac when I’m with people I respect and admire.  But generally I just want to hear their story of how they handled something, how their journey has unfolded in certain areas.  How they got where they are today.  And sometimes I do the tried and true former teacher method of when all else fails, borrow what someone else has done, try it on for size and see if it fits my soul today.  No need to overcomplicate or re-invent the wheel.  So again I reiterate, I’m happy to share a piece of my (again, I say limited) experience if there is something you want to hear about… what has worked and not worked for me.  But if I ever write something called “Top 10 Ways to Be Oh-So-Incredibly Amazing, Just Like Me”, please shoot me. Puh-leeeease.  (Yes, I realize I have a pretty raging resentment towards big shots and “know-it-alls”, and so then I need to look at where those egotistical traits are showing up in my life because it’s possible…. Since those characteristics bug the living crap out of me and where there’s a nerve hit, many times there’s a commonality there.)
 
All of us were raised by humans who saw life one way, believed certain things, operated certain ways.  It was completely normal for my family of origin to be rolling around the Bay Area in a large 1970’s station wagon well into the 1990’s.  That was (unfortunately for me) our norm.  Others like my husband had to have the newest, fastest German car available.  Everyone believes their religion or political stance is “right”, so does that make other beliefs wrong or misguided?  No.   It’s starting to really go below the belt when we start questioning the mental health of those with opinions opposite from our own. In my opinion, that’s arrogance run rampant. I’m wondering when we get to the place where we just accept eachother as humans with different preferences and opinions and quit labeling things as right or wrong, good or bad.
 
Now let’s all join hands and sing “We Are the World.”  Just kidding.  Most of you are too young to even know that song, sadly.  My point is, I think some of the most unfortunate kind of thinking is close-minded, dualistic thinking- and I’m not saying I haven’t done it myself many times.  It’s like, of paramount importance to me these days to recognize it and correct it when it shows up my life.
 
So the next time I jump to critique my dad’s gardening abilities, hopefully I can just remember that he’s just using his own techniques, as I have every right to use mine.  (Although admittedly my “laziness” isn’t really a method per se.)  Plus, many people have found out the hard way that I have a black thumb.  Many a plant has been given to me as a baby gift, housewarming gift, Mother’s Day gift.  Each of those plants are now in the arms of Jesus and all the Saints.  And that’s without dousing them in gasoline and anti-freeze.  So clearly, I should not be doling out advice like Tic-Tacs.  Particularly when it comes to horticulture…and stroller folding.