Check Myself Before I Wreck Myself

It's very interesting to watch myself on television, because now I'm realizing I really don't think before I speak sometimes. Case in point: I've been married to the most wonderful man in the world for 16 years, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, and I can't imagine being married to anyone else but him. But what did I say about my night out? "If this is what dating is like in New York, I'm going to stay in my marriage forever." That may have sounded like I was saying I'm not happy in my marriage, but that's completely untrue. I just didn't think before I spoke. I just want everyone to know that I'm learning to "check myself before I wreck myself" in terms of what I say from now on! I like going out with my girlfriends at night because lunches are hard for me with my work schedule. We all go out once our children are down for the night, around 8 or 9 o'clock at night. It's nice to go out with just the girls once a month or once every couple of months just to feel that kind of sisterhood spirit.

Avery had a big audition in this week's episode, which was great. When Avery was about 9 ½ she constantly told me she wanted to be in movies. She'd look at Dakota Fanning and say, "She's an actress. She's my age. She's on TV. She's in movies -- I should be too. Get me on, mom! Find me an agent, make it happen." So when we met Marlene from Wilhelmina, Avery was thrilled to be signed up and started going on go-sees for commercials and other things.At the same time, my mom fell tragically ill with cancer, and was only given three months to live. My mom became my priority, and with the help of God and prayer, she miraculously lived another three years. At this time I told the agency Avery couldn't go on any more go-sees because it was too time consuming in light of my mom's illness. You should have seen my daughter's face when she came home and the answering machine was no longer filled with messages of go-see appointments. I consoled her at the time and told her to wait until she was older, because perhaps this wasn't the right time, and assured her she could pursue acting later.

My mom passed away a year ago, and I've been feeling guilty in terms of Avery's acting career. I feel that I contributed to killing her passion for it, and I thought now would be a good time to pursue it again. Children are really molded by what you tell them, and now she has mixed feelings about acting, and I think my telling her to wait contributed to her apprehension. For example, I remember when she was 7 and she really wanted to be a ballerina. I never said, "You can't be a ballerina," but I did tell her that being a ballerina is tough work, and that if she wanted to be married, have children, a career, and be a ballerina - it's very difficult to juggle all of that. Just from my saying that to her in a conversational way, she stopped wanting to be a ballerina, and the same thing kind of happened with acting. She really had a passion for it, but my telling her to wait until she was older made her think twice about it. I feel guilty about that, so we're trying again. The most important thing, of course, is that I have a brilliant, well-adjusted, wonderful daughter, and I will love and support her in anything she decides to do.

Earth Week is coming up soon, and one green thing I do in my life is I don't ask for shopping bags when I'm only buying a few things. I just put them in my purse and cut down on shopping bags that way. I also try to conserve napkins when I buy coffee or tea, and don't ask for those items to be bagged. Just a small thing to do to help conserve!

-Ramona