The Mix Tape Mom

Track 5: Youth Sports Hello Readers!  Today's topic is Youth Sports....do you love them or hate them?  This is such a hot topic on community pages because it seems like the amount of youth sports your child is involved in, somehow is a badge of honor for the parents.  I don't get it!   Our family is heavily involved in sports with two of our kids still playing youth sports.  We are involved in multiple sports over here, including football and boys basketball (neither of these are at the youth level, our son is in high school and only plays for his high school team).  We also play volleyball (at the local recreational level), basketball (at the local/community travel level), and softball (at the slightly bigger travel level).  I love that my kids play sports, it teaches them life lessons well beyond the court, field, and diamond, however the amount of money and time that youth sports are costing families is ridiculous.   My 13 year old da...

Track 4: Growing a Following  Hello readers!  OK, I am trying to build something that I can use as my creative outlet, a personal release for feelings that I cannot always express to the people in my local life and something that can gain enough attention that I can use it for good.   I'm trying to build a following on Instagram.  When I first started using Social Media it was an online diary.  I started on Facebook when it began, back when you needed a college email address and you waited patiently for your college to be added to the Facebook data, meta, whatever Mark Zuckerberg was doing in college dorm room to make it what it became.... However, the purpose of Social Media has changed from being an online diary to the leading form of advertising.  I'm a mom in her 40's, I'm not ignorant to how tech works, I know how the internet works, but I'm in a generation where after high school or college, we went out and found in person jobs.  Now, those ...

Track 3: Couponing...who does it? Mood: Nostalgic Hello readers! Who else grew up in the 90's and remembers going to the grocery store with their parents with a whole binder or zipper pack of coupons?  We would carefully shop based off the little paper clippings we had that week and when it came to check out, we would give the cashier all of our coupons!  I remember my dad would double check the cashier's screen to make sure the correct amount was taken off our total.   I recall this so well as a kid and then I tried it about 15 years ago when I first became a mom.  I thought it would be a good way to save money after just having a baby.  However, I quickly found that couponing was hard!  I watched other moms figuring it out on Facebook, they would go to the grocery and spend $26 on a whole table top worth of groceries, but they would have 10 jars of spaghetti sauce because they would stack coupons and I thought to myself, "Why would I need 10 jars of ...

Track 2: Gray Hair, WTF! Mood: Annoyed Hello listeners!  (Well, readers, but I'm sticking to the Mix Tape theme).  Who in their 40's would be completely gray if you didn't color your hair every 4 weeks?!  I hate my hair, it's the thing about my body I like the least, which being a mom of 3 in her 40's isn't awful, but I hate my hair.  It's thin, it won't style, it gets frizzy but won't curl, I think it makes me look older than I am.   I'm annoyed because it's time to color my hair.....again, and I hate coloring my hair.  I don't go to a salon to actually relax and enjoy the process.  I just buy a cheap hair dye box from Walmart and annoyingly color my own hair in my small bathroom.  I complain about coloring my hair, but then I complain about my hair looking too gray.   My kids' grandma still colors her hair and I can't be grayer than grandma!  Or can I? Alright ladies, who has gone fully gray and loves it?  I need all the...

Track 1: Life is a Mix Tape  Mood: Happy(ish) Welcome to The Mix Tape Mom!  While I am sure I have zero audience right now, I'm the mom behind the mix tape.  The point of this blog is to talk about all the mixed emotions I have as a 40 something year old and reach out to other moms and wives and friends who are dealing with the same happy moments and sad moments while trying to keep the angry moments at a distance.  If you are in your 40's, born in the 80's but raised in the 90's then......same!   In the past 4 plus decades I have seen enough things to write about.....mostly good things, but some things that I would have liked to skip over.  A Mix Tape today is a foreign thought because it's just a playlist, it doesn't carry the same impact it did in the 90's.  We listen to our Spotify or Apple Music playlists, but who actually curates the list by hand anymore?  Remember when we would have to think hard about what songs we were going to put o...