Apr

Eating Under the Stars

This afternoon Hubs, First Son, Small Man & I met up with a Friend & his Son (our Son’s Bestest Buddy) @ Sci-Port, our local science center. We had a blast chasing the Boys around & checking out all the awesome science-y stuff. After a while everyone in Sci-Port knew it was time for Small Man to eat, because he RAWR’ed his little face off for a couple minutes.

I had been trying to think of a good nursing spot & figured that the Planetarium would be perfect & boy, was I right. I told Hubs we were going to go have some Boob & we’d catch up to them as soon as we were done. We went into the darkness & were all by ourselves, which was quite a contrast to the hustle & bustle going on just on the other side of the walls. It was wonderful.

I got to feed Small Man while listening to beautiful, relaxing piano music in the dark, quiet, star-filled Planetarium. I wish we could have stayed forever.

*Ohhmm Raawwr*

*KODI*

14 years ago Short URL Comments

All Things RAWR/Kodi/Life/Lil' rawrs/Play

breast feeding/family/planetarium/play date

Apr

anomalemon

For someone who lives in the greater Seattle area, I am an anomaly in that I do not drink coffee. There is Starbucks and Tullys and Peet’s, Oh My! (oh my because there’s so many more!) I’ve learned to tolerate the smell but the taste still gets me every time. No mocha, no thank you.

Now, this does not mean I do not need help waking up in the morning. I have never been a morning person either. A frustrating combination to live with when you’re 16. It has taken many years beyond 16 to gain a few tricks to help me wake up and feel motivated. Below are the suggestions worthy of a rawr.

1. My first go-to is the shower. The warm, steamy shower. The quality of the shower experience depends on a few factors such as the shower head, the surface under your feet, the space for your elbows and most importantly, the time span of hot water. Oh, and there’s a routine. The graphic below illustrates just so perfectly a typical morning.
Unfortunately, if your hot water tank is not large enough, you get stopped at step 4. Investing in a tankless water heater is like a bottomless cup of coffee that is always hot and fresh.

2. When the shower just isn’t enough, I turn to a cup of hot water and lemon juice. Yup, it is that simple. A cup with a handle, a kettle or hot water dispenser and one lemon is all you need. Slice the lemon in half, put it in a bag or container and stash in the fridge for your week. Squeeze several drops of lemon into your water and feel your snotty self dissolve away.

3. If I’m ever so blessed to have sunshine in the morning (remember, Seattle is gray and cloudy), that sparkling ray of sunshine is my last ray of hope to wake up with a smile. Just recently science is proving that humans need a certain amount of daylight (with its complex colors and varying intensities) to sleep well at night and feel good in the day. Daylight is crucial to balancing our circadian systems and maintaining good health. Even 15 minutes of direct sunlight can help you sleep better at night, so it truly is worth it to stop, take a break and get outside.

-Marie

14 years ago Short URL Comments

All Things RAWR/Big Rexes/Life/Marie/Work

am/breakfast/energy/morning routine/nature/overtired/tired/wake up

Apr

What RAWR means to me, Erin

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself.- Bruce Lee

If you had met me at age 20 you would have said, “The Rawr is strong with that one.” I was passionate and driven with a strong sense of self. I lived, laughed, and loved to the max. In fact, my husband often bragged to people that my fiery disposition was one of the reasons he fell in love with me. I was unapologetically me and damn proud, and I’m sure I couldn’t imagine a time where that wouldn’t be true.

Of course, I didn’t know that like most adults life would start to happen at an alarming rate. Long hours of interning, commuting, and working followed by long hours of being a mom and wife were covertly dampening my spark. Most of the time I don’t think I even noticed, and when I did I would just tell myself that I would find time to feed my passions later.

Fast forward to me at age 28: Separated from my husband and living in my friend’s spare room with my 2-year-old son, and soon to find out that I was pregnant with another. I was broken and sad, and I could not understand how my life got to such a point. I grieved my marriage and felt absolutely powerless to save it. I would stand on the porch dropping off my son, and wonder how I could struggle to find words with a man I had shared my entire adult life with. Of course, what words we did find were often screamed at each other and punctuated with cursing and doors slamming. It felt so chaotic, so out of control. I wanted to be happy, but I was afraid of what that might mean. I felt the need to Rawr way down deep, but it never managed to make it out into the world without being drowned by tears.

And then my Rawr light-bulb moment happened. My husband and I were reeling from yet another knock-down, drag-out fight when he called me. I found the words “I want a divorce” coming out of my mouth. In the moment of silence that followed I think we both realized that I wasn’t bluffing or speaking in anger. I meant it. The strangest thing is that I always assumed speaking those words would be devastating and life shattering. Instead I found myself feeling somehow liberated. I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was making a choice based on what I wanted and needed, and suddenly I could breathe again. My Rawr had finally bubbled up to the surface. That’s when the truth hit me; if I wanted to be happy, I needed to be true to myself again. No more fear, no more people pleasing, and no more burying my needs and passions in favor of the needs of others.

So I started to live for me. I reconnected with friends I had neglected, I listened to old albums I hadn’t dusted off since college, and I started to find opportunities to really live. I was rebuilding me, and it felt so damn good. And along the way I somehow found myself reconnecting with my husband. We took baby steps at first, and slowly trust and communication started to form again. What developed was a commitment from both of us to work on saving our marriage, but to equally work on ourselves. It wasn’t going to be enough to fight for the bigger picture if the smaller pieces weren’t healthy and happy.

The icing on my Rawr rediscovery cake was discovering roller derby. I dove in and found myself surrounded by strong, determined, passionate women who were excited to have me as part of their sisterhood. I discovered that I could be “Erin- wife and mother of 2,” but that I could also be “Shove & Tell, #22, the bringer of merciless low blocks.” It felt amazing to rediscover the athletic, fierce self that I thought was long buried in my youth.

In the past year I have lived, laughed, and loved so hard. I found my passion and spark again, and this time it’s not something I take for granted. I know it’s a fire that needs to be fed as often as I can. So I love my children fiercely and allow myself to be silly and fun, I connect with my husband and let myself be vulnerable and in love, I rock out to good music, I connect with friends, and I unleash my roller derby bad-ass whenever possible. I always thought I would grieve the end of my 20s as the end of the best years of my life, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the best is yet to come.

#Erin (aka Shove & Tell #22)

14 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

All Things RAWR/Erin/Life/Move/Play

bruce lee/family/identity/marriage/motherhood/rawr/roller derby

Mar

What RAWR means to me, Marie

What RAWR means to me…https://allthingsrawr.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=40&action=edit&message=10

I started “RAWR”ing in the summer of 2011, while pregnant.

I watched my waistline expand, felt my hormones surging and encountered an appetite that would shame a truck driver. As my growing bean began suctioning off my brain cells, I found my vocabulary shrinking. My word choice began to revert to cave-man sounds. When I was hungry, I found myself unable to form complete sentences. Unable to utter words with any coherence. My hunger whittled my brain down to a simple “rawr” to communicate my immediate need for food. But it didn’t end there.

…

RAWR!

…

The rawr turned from a nice request for good food, soon -into a RAWR- the demand for good food, now! Not long after that, my brave partner, Raul, coined the name, “Preggosaurus Rex” to describe my dinosaur-like behavior and demand for a snack. So began my rawr, it almost ended there.

I was only pregnant for the summer. My son, George Alfred, did not survive the fall. He passed in mid-September and was born still on the last day of summer, half way to his due date. Overcome with grief, sadness and heartbreak, my rawrs retreated into little lamb bleats, barely vocalized. I slipped into the darkness of a gray, rainy, Seattle fall and winter, expecting the rawr to be washed away with the rain.

Through the darkest of days, I had a light that kept shining on me. I couldn’t escape it, as hard as I tried. The light of love from my friends, family, and fur-babies could not be escaped. They loved me no matter what. And their love kept my rawr alive. It was dormant, buried under tears and behind the walls of my heart, but it was alive. Love was like the little nightlight, burning dimly but just bright enough that you can find your way through the darkness.

I remember it clearly. The first real Brunch since our world came crashing down. The first mimosa and croque madame. The first time I could actually forget. The moment when the clouds parted and the sun shone on my heart, for just a second, came out of nowhere. The RAWR that escaped surprised me and my grief with it’s power. I still had it! I started to find joy in life again. Pushing myself to be better, feel better, live better. In one of these joyful moments, it occurred to me that when I feel the most RAWR is when my heart is the most full of love. (Even if my moment of rawr seems out of frustration or anger, there is an underlying current of love and joy required.) RAWR is love. Love for life. One has to be excited to “RAWR”!

releasing my inner rawr
hammer style

To support my journey of healing, and at the previous urging of friends, I decided to start All Things RAWR because I need a place to collect those moments, things and flashes of RAWR around me. I’ve asked some of my dear friends, those willing to walk beside me until my clouds lifted, to join me in documenting the RAWR around us.

May the RAWR be with you.

14 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

All Things RAWR/Life/Loss/Marie

family/friends/identity/infertility/loss/love/miscarriage/motherhood/pregnancy loss/rawr/still birth

Jan

All Things Rawr!

Rawr. According to THE Urban Dictionary Rawr has several meanings:

1. A word that means “I love you” in dinosaur.

2. A primitive sound used to represent a personal feeling. Due to the generic and modular nature of the word, the actual implied meaning varies from person to person.

3. A more sexually oriented and cooler version of the word “roar”.

4. In dinosaur, the way of saying, “Hey. You there. Yes, you good sir. I wanted to afford you the courtesy of letting you know that I’m about to eat you. Quite right, eh?”

5. More importantly, we consider the word, “RAWR” to be all of the above and then some. Rawr is a mother’s love, a child’s hunger, a pregnant woman’s anger, an alternate to honking at bad drivers, and a socially acceptable replacement for any other four letter word. It can mean good and bad, hungry and full, light and dark.

This blog is an attempt to gather All Things Rawr into one space that enriches and enlightens our daily rawrs.

all things rawr