Spoons & Stitches

Anti-Inflammatory Food If you read this blog more for the spoons than the stitches, then you probably know what chronic pain is like. Living with chronic pain is not easy, particularly the unexpected changes in your pain level. You might have a really good day or a really bad day-and no way to tell which is coming. Right?  I recently went to my nurse practitioner about my pain. I'd had two days of horrible, crying on the couch, pain. Just sitting still was painful enough to cause tears, never mind the idea of getting up and moving on that knee. This was two months AFTER my knee surgery, so it shouldn't have been that bad. I begged her for an answer, other than more narcotic pain medicine. She told me: change your diet. Oh please! How many times have people told me that if I just lose weight I'll feel great again? Yeah right. I did it once and I still felt like crap. For reference, see my first knee surgery that came when I was at normal weight . No, no, she said.

I recently read a blog by one of my favorite bloggers-Jen @ PIWTPITT. She talked about being the World's Okayest Mom . That got me thinking-what makes the world's greatest mom? We hear about Super Moms, Soccer Moms, Perfect Moms, and all kinds of other titles. But what does a woman do to earn one of these titles? While I was thinking about this, I saw visions of the mom who drives her kids everywhere, packs them perfectly healthy lunches every day, bakes cookies, volunteers on the kids' PTA or home schools her kids, plans play dates, and still has energy to clean the house (which is spotless) at the end of the day. I don't know about you, but I can never live up to that. I will never win the "World's Greatest Mom" award from the world. No outside person would look at my struggle in motherhood and think I'm great. But there is something I realized not long ago-it's not the world that I need to approve of my mothering skills. (I almost called the