Hippie Mom in a Preppy World

Archive for the ‘Bandora’ Category

As I ate some organic plain granola with yogurt (yummy!) I read the bag it came in “no artificial preservatives, flavors or colors”  and chuckled at how some people call me granola as an insult but the more I look at it, the more I take it as a compliment.

I sometimes refer to myself as a ‘hippie mama’, “offbeat mama” or a ‘crunchy granola mom’. The terms are a sort of short-hand way to tell you something about who I am. For example, I plan to cloth diaper, breastfeed and babywear. I consider myself a feminist and a pacifist. I subscribe to Mothering magazine and my baby listens to a lot of drumming music.

However, when compared to other granola moms I’m merely crispy, not crunchy. I took a “how crunchy are you?” online quiz and got the result- “Super Nutty, Ultra-Crunchy, Granola Earth Mama” but beware that at 139 points this is nowhere near the high score of “WOW!~Crunchier than Grape Nuts!”.

However, one mama can only be so crunchy, you know? So, today, I am going to share with you some of the many ways that I am not such a hippie mama after all.

1. I love camping but I must still have access to a shower, even if just a camping shower bag.

2. I do not own a pair of Birkenstocks, and I never have.

3. I do not enjoy Bob Dylan, although I am sure he has a broad influence and revolutionized music as we know it. Or something.

4. I  shop at Walmart. While I would like to avoid big box stores whenever possible, sometimes they really do have the best prices and selection.

5. Even though I’ve been vegan and vegetarian for years in the past.  I eat meat, and I like it. I also eat wheat and dairy and occasionally consume high-fructose corn syrup. Because sometimes? Mama needs a coke slurpee fix.

6- I have a lot of baby gear such as a crib, bounce chair and stroller, and including the playard, otherwise known as a  baby jail.

7. I am pretty law-abiding, although I have no problem writing a strongly worded letter to an elected official.

8. We live in the suburbs, and have no plans to move back to the land.  I don’t care for the sprawl but I live with it.

9- I have plastic food containers, as much as I strive for BPA free, I admit I still have plenty that came from the dollar store.

10- We recycle and try to be environmentally conscious but I admit that my carbon footprint still has room for shrinkage.

11- We have a TV (although 95% or more of its usage is by hubby I still watch some shows)

Sometimes I  feel judged by people and others make comments that  I am engaged in a one woman game of ‘hippier than thou’. I am not. I do the things I do because I enjoy them. If you don’t enjoy them, it’s fine by me.  I will not agree with it, I will not endorse it or promote it but I will respect it, just know that you will get an earful of my opinion if you open that door but I will never go on an unsolicited sermon (unless you start the subject).  It’s also cool if you’re an organic raw vegan who wears Birkenstocks and loves to primitive camp. As long as we can be tolerant and understanding, we can join together as one happy tribe, I say.

We take a break from our scheduled baby programming to recognize that today marks the 1 year anniversary of our legal wedding; a simple trip to the local courthouse to sign the papers and make it legal.

It was something that had been discussed since shortly after getting engaged. I knew that it would be way easier for me to plan on “getting weddinged” than “getting married” in a public event. Plus it gave me the opportunity to get all the name change paperwork out of the way early on.

At the time some people thought that it was an April’s Fool joke because we kept it quiet and didn’t tell the world until a Facebook announcement the previous day. I guess the joke’s on them.

It was just us and the representative of the State of Florida (with her Holy Bible, although she gave us the option of skipping the prayer) on a beautiful spring day on the gazebo outside the courthouse. Fox’s mom and sister happened to drive by the gazebo less than 2 minutes after the short ceremony was over.

Thinking back, most people don’t get to celebrate their marriage as much as we did. We had our legal wedding on April 2nd with a small gathering at Shindig’s, the Irish bar where we celebrated our engagement at and where we had a round on the house right after the courthouse. On May 1st we had our engagement/wedding party at FPG and culminated with our handfasting on August 29th.

The only photo of our legal wedding

Our Shindig's Bar celebration post-courthouse

At our FPG wedding party

Our cake topper at our handfasting

We have several anniversary dates that we try to honor every month:
2nd- (May 2nd) The anniversary from us “hooking up” at FPG and the date we used to count how long we had been dating for. That is also why we chose the 2nd (April 2nd) as our legal wedding anniversary.

17th- (August 17th) the anniversary of when we became official “boyfriend and girlfriend”. We had been dating for several months, he was driving 2 hours each way from Port St Lucie to Hollywood to see me twice a week, our relationship status on Facebook was “It’s complicated” and it took him getting down on his knees at the parking lot for Dave & Busters and begging me to be his girlfriend for what felt like an eternity before I caved in and agreed.

29th- (August 29th) the anniversary of our Pagan handfasting and to most our “public wedding”

Every month we manage to forget about one of these dates, usually it would be the 17th. But since we miraculously remembered the 17th in March, we ended up skipping the 29th, whoops!

So normally we would be celebrating at Shindig’s bar but since I’m not drinking our plans are of the sober kind. It would be great to have a picnic at the gazebo where we stood a year ago but since that borders on trespassing we’ll just take it somewhere else.

At least we get to see the gazebo from time to time as it is part of our commute depending on the route we take.

The last year has been quite an adventure with many happy moments and several though trials and we continue moving forward as we “attempt” to get ready for the biggest adventure yet… parenthood.

So while I wait for my beloved to come home from work to celebrate, this might be a good time to get off my @$$ and finally work on our wedding scrapbook…

Today is the 10 month anniversary of our legal wedding (we celebrated the 5 month handfasting anniversary a couple of days ago).

I lot may change but we’re still corny with the best of them….