Joe’s salary is base + bonus on the hours he makes. So his paycheck fluctuates. It’s a very fair set-up, but sometimes we think we know what we’re going to make in a pay period and… we’re wrong.

So that happened. Friday.

Then Joe’s iPhone broke. Friday night.

Then we discovered that our mortgage payment had gone up. By $200. In my financial world there is not $200 of wiggle room for the random upping of the mortgage payment. (No, just in case you’re concerned, we’re not on an ARM; they just recalculated our escrow and we have to bring our escrow balance up in time for tax payment.)

The good news of our weekend was that Joe’s iPhone is still covered by warranty (29 days left) so they fixed it for free. Sigh of relief.

All weekend long my brain sounded like this ohmygodohmygodohmygodohDear God I’m sorry, I need to trust you, I know I do, I’m sorry, help me to trust You, it’s just that ohmygodohmygod Okay I did it again, I’m sorry I’m really trying…. Ad infinitum.

Monday night, Joe’s on his way home, and I’m scrounging around, depressed by the fact that my pantry and freezer are so close to empty and I have no grocery money. I’m feeling sorry for myself, and resentful, and all I can think of is all the people I know who seem to be making it just fine and what do they know that we don’t know? and why is this so difficult for us? and aren’t we working as hard as we can? and what else can we do? and it just isn’t fair. And other purposeless phrases. I find a package of sausage and throw it in the sink to thaw, figuring that pancakes and eggs (one of my favorite meals anytime, anywhere) and sausage will be just the thing.

Joe gets home and we give each other that looks that says ohmygodohmygodohmygod – yeah I know, me too – ohmygodohmygod as he is engulfed by children. Happy children. Happy children who do not understand why they need to make this pack of Pull-ups last as long as possible.

We finally get dinner made and kids seated and plates served, and we’re sitting around the table eating pancakes and Joe’s explaining to the kids why we have to give them spankings when they are foolish, because we do not want them to grow up to be foolish people who are always unhappy and cannot serve God. Robbie, my little handsome not-yet-three-year-old, forks his last bite of pancake and waves it mid-air to emphasize his words: “I am being wise.” He shoves the pancake in his mouth and nods. “Foolish vewwy bad.”

And I look at him and my eyes get all watery and I think this is it.

A little while later, I am doing dishes and Joe has taken the kids outside so I have a little space in which to do dishes. I can see them all from the kitchen window. I’m standing at the sink, scrubbing plastic Lion King plates and wiping drops of syrup, and outside I see my handsome husband balancing three chattering children on the hammock with him. He looks up and gives me the “I Love You” sign.

And I look at him and my eyes get all watery and I think this is it.

This is it. This is what matters.

I pause my scrubbing for a minute to look up. Okay, God, I say. I’m sorry. I’m done. You’re in charge. I’m not.

No more ohmygodohmygod but O God, how great is Thy goodness, which Thou has laid up for them that fear thee; which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the songs of men!

What matters in your life today?

A perfect day for walking, sunny and warm but pleasant. Birds and frogs and dogs are all making their own conversation and I hear the cut-off voices of people as I stride past houses where they are outside, weeding beds, unloading cars, directing children, taking trash to the curb. Kids riding scooters and trikes stop and look at me. I hear one of them say I’ve never seen her before as they resume their driveway circles.

I look at the ditch, at the trees, at the road, at the sky, try not to look at the man jogging this way. Joggers never look like they’re having a good time. This guy is sweat-covered, his fake-tanned skin shiny and wet, huffing and looking like death is imminent. My stepmom’s first husband died of the heart attack he had while out jogging. There are no guarantees. I give the quick nod and keep walking.

Lawnmowers are rumbling around everywhere, because it’s that time of evening when all the men come home from the jobs they do for someone else and need to assert their reign over the home kingdom. Or else the grass is just too high. Some of the dandelions survived here by the road, the low-growing smart ones.

Our field at home is dotted with bright yellow dandelions, flagrant on the deep green grass, oblivious to their inevitable doom. Large mown fields wherein no plants grow, no animals graze… one of the frivolities of American suburbia. Strange how we clear the land, strip it down, to plant the grass so we can cut it down all summer long.

I love a picnic in a nice green field… but many never get even that much use. Here’s one field that is obviously well-used: grill, picnic tables, fire pit, worn path to the house on the hill. There’s another without any signs at all, but a perfect picnic spot at the edge, that little grove of five trees.

Nature is not perfect. Nature makes mistakes, but she finds a way to use them. There is no waste.

My legs are rubbery and my feet are slapping down the hill. I haven’t used these muscles in this way in a while. All of it is refreshing, even the ache I feel beginning in my hips. It means that I am alive.

I plunge back into the woods and stand, disoriented for a second. Where is the trail? Ah, there, down the hill a few feet. The worn leaves on the path give no crunch of resistance. The tree branches stretch to hold the sky up over my head. There are tiny pale green leaflets on the dogwoods. The deep purple-pink of the redbuds is definite, alive against a brown background of tree trunks and last year’s leaves.

I cross the field toward the house, that lavishly mown field that curves down to our driveway, our door, and let myself in.

-

Linked up with Steady Mom’s 30-Minute Blogging Challenge… though I actually have no idea how long it took me to write this… It was written in my head as I walked, jotted onto a notebook page this morning, typed and posted…

We found the first open daffodils. We smelled them. We tried not to touch them.

Later we found lots more, so we picked a few and put them in a vase for Mommy. I love being Mommy.


I launched a Safe Herbs for Babies series and more in Parenting 101 series. I’m getting better at being focused. Yay, me! This is the part where I stop typing so I can pat myself on the back. Okay. Done now. Back to typing.

So the daffodils were great, and the sticking-to-the-editorial-calendar is great, but the real GREATNESS, the best, the genuinely awesome, the absolute HIGHLIGHT of our entire week (month) was when that gold Honda minivan pulled into the driveway. There was my sister and her three, and after the initial hugging and screaming and dancing and general mayhem died down, we had several lovely days of more hugging and screaming and dancing and general mayhem.

The girls went to the salon on Sunday afternoon. Aunt Katie worked her magic.

Ava’s hair got shorter.

Mara’s hair got shorter.

Mine got redder and Mileah’s got blonder.

We have just one thing to say: AUNT KATIE IS AWESOME.

We went to the park. Joe met us on his lunch hour.

We climbed and played and slid and twirled and swung (swang? swinged?).

The kids played inside and outside as much as possible, and my sister and I talked as much as possible. Then she packed up the minivan and headed back to Tennessee, and we waved from the front porch and walked into our eerily quiet house.

Now I’m depressed.

I will battle my depression with the one sure-fire cure I know. It always works for me.

Books! Reading! Yay! Just don’t go reading a depressing book if you’re trying to use books to battle depression. We’ll keep it on the light side this week.

Blogs

• FIMBY’s very honest, conversation-sparking post about feeling isolated. I guess this doesn’t exactly count as “light reading” but it’s definitely worth a visit. I think it touches on something more common than we realize, this feeling of being “on the outside.”
• The Ultimate Hack for Writing Productivity at Write to Done, a guest post by Bamboo Forest of Pun Intended. Great points. It’s the details that kill us. And the procrastination. And the distractions. And lack of focus… “We can be real. We can be writers.†We can do this. We can set a timer, commit ourselves to working non-stop until it sounds and feel proud at what we’ve accomplished.”

Books

• Grow Your Own Drugs: Easy Recipes for Natural Remedies and Beauty Fixes by James Wong. If you are interested in herbs, natural beauty and body products, and/or natural health, you should read this book. It’s great for beginners, as there is a glossary and lots of clear explanations of special terms, ingredients, supplies, etc. I love the collection of recipes and I’m going to be trying several in the next few weeks, so more on that as it materializes. Beautiful photos, too.
• A Stew or a Story , M.F.K. Fisher, editor. My favorite Fisher is still the big yellow collection. I can just lose myself in there for hours, though I always come out eventually because I have to go cook something. This shorter collection is nice, too, and it has several essays I hadn’t read. Fisher is my source of cooking inspiration when I’m just kind of tired of the kitchen.

And Otherwise

• Gigi, God’s Little Princess. I recently received and reviewed this children’s dvd from Thomas Nelson Publishers. Bottom line: cute, good message straight from the Bible, very girl-girly, my daughter was enraptured, but I wouldn’t want to watch it 20 times. But then, what children’s dvd would I want to watch 20 times?

What’s your recommended reading for the week?

Once I tried to decorate cupcakes for our church’s harvest party. They were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing, and I had this yellow and orange decorator’s gel, and I thought, “How hard can it be to draw a little leaf shape on the top of the cupcake?”
Pretty doowopping difficult, as it turns out, at least for me. The leaves looked like mutilated spider webs, so I just dumped a lot of decorator’s sugar over the top and let it be. Sometimes you just need to know what you’re not good at…

But then with kids you don’t get to just avoid the things you’re not good at. Instead, you get challenged and inspired and sometimes you just grit your teeth and make yourself do whatever it is needs to be done for their general welfare, well-being, and development into a semi-normal person. I’m still not sure that “crafty stuff” is necessary for development into a semi-normal person, but I am no authority on things normal. So. Wanting to give my children some chance at a “normal life” (whatever that is) and feeling Mom-guilt upon perusing blogs of people who, apparently, have crafty as their middle names, and (this is the real kicker, I can ignore the other two) seeing how Mara and Robbie light up whenever I pull out things pertaining to artsy endeavors or general craftiness…
I pulled out the pipe cleaners.
And the yarn.
And the scissors.
And the construction paper.
And the (sigh) glue sticks. I hate glue sticks. Glue sticks are supposed to prevent glue messes, but somehow that’s never the result for us. Oh well. Fun is worth it!

And we had fun a nd were semi-crafty, at least as crafty as it gets around here.
I made yarn pictures of their names. Zeke didn’t get one because he was napping. And because he would have eaten the yarn. And the pipe cleaners. And the glue sticks.
And helped Robbie draw a rocket ship, because last night Daddy told us about rocket ships and rocket science and astronauts and planets and outer space and, most importantly, the FIRE that comes out of the rocket when it takes off from earth…

And helped Mara make a picture of balloons: YARN balloons! Who knew there was such a thing? I did not until we started making them. Watch out, crafty Mamas, we’re starting to get creative over here!

And then we made the fun chains of pipe cleaners and had rousing games of “make the pipe cleaners hisssss and squirm like snakes” and “wave the chains of pipe cleaners around while jumping and singing songs” before hanging them on the windows. Who needs curtains when you have pipe cleaners?

All this craftiness is wearing me out. I need to go bake something and then NOT decorate it.

-

I linked this post to Se7en’s Fabulous Friday Fun #10! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I ♥ Resolutions

Okay, I love New Year’s. It’s my favorite holiday. (I just realized that this year so I’m broadcasting it in hopes that the people I love will recognize and support me in my favoritism by buying me gifts for New Year’s, too. I mean, it’s the least they could do, really.)

I love making resolutions. I come up with a long list every year. Some years I decide not to go overboard, and I limit myself to something reasonable: 10 or, okay, 11 if I just can’t help it.

And yeah, I don’t keep them all. At all. Hardly ever. I goof, I fail, I mess up, I quit, I weaken, I have no willpower.

Except for this year. This is the year.
Right?

Making Progress? Really? (Or Is That Heartburn?)

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, lately, despite my habitual resolution making and breaking: I’m actually making progress. I guess the endless repetition is finally getting to me. My resolutions are generally far bigger than can be accomplished in one year, anyway. (For example, #11 from 2005, “Prove global warming is a myth” and #6 from 2007, “If not a myth, figure out how to solve global warming.” That just takes some time, I don’t care who you are.)

I’m making progress. Don’t ask me how, exactly. I still do a lot of the same stupid stuff in the same stupid way (i.e., get mad at Joe for not reading my mind, expect my kids to get along with each other, stay up too late, eat too much, forget to work out, forget to call, forget to write, forget my name, find myself on the Amtrak headed to Toronto in early spring… oh wait, sorry, I just lapsed into a Mommy-escape fantasy there. Back to what I was saying.)

I still do the same stupid stuff, but I don’t do it quite as often. I still do the same stupid stuff, but I get over it quicker. And I’m happier. And maybe this has nothing to do with New Year’s and making resolutions at all. Maybe this is just me and where I am in life, and I just happen to be reflecting on it all as 2009 goes out and 2010 comes in.

The last 5 years have been a rollercoaster. More ups than downs, and crazy fun, but intense.

A Recap

2004:
January – Joe and I start courting. (And yes, I said courting not dating and I’ll go into that some other time but not here, goshdarnit, so just keep reading and don’t get bogged down in those little details.)
May - Joe and I get engaged.
September – Joe and I get married. I move to St. Louis, since, being married and all, we kind of want to be together.
2005:
Jan – September – We adjust to married life, we work together in the family business, we have fun, I miss my family a lot, I want to have a baby, I start worrying that I can’t get pregnant (no birth control! Hello!), I start writing more.
October – We’re pregnant!
December – We buy a house and move in!
2006:
Jan – June – Pregnancy and home ownership.
July – Mara is born on July 11. We have a wonderful home birth. She is beautiful. She is an easy baby.
2007:
Feb – We decide that Mara is so easy, we should have another. We’re pregnant!
May – I spend the entire month in MS to be with my Mom, who is not going to get better. It is the strangest experience I have ever had. Our emotions are as strung out as possible. I miss my husband.
June – My mom dies. I go back home. I am numb.
November – Robbie is born. Our son. I start getting unnumb.
December – We spend Christmas in Colorado. I think I was supposed to be born there, and live there, and we start plotting how we will move there.

2008:
April – My Dad gets married and my sister gets married, within a week of each other.
August – We haven’t figured out what causes this. We’re pregnant! My dad says, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I alternate between “YAY” and fits of “ohmygoodness-howcouldyoudothistome-whydidwethinkthiswasagoodidea-wearegoingtobeinsane-weareinsane-ican’tdothis-aaaaaaaaaah.”
2009:
April – Zeke is born. I think, “Third birth at home, nooo problem. It’ll be easy.” Haha, Andrea, haha. But he is beautiful, our little Ezekiel.
May – July – Our house, when did it start shrinking?
August - From out of nowhere  comes a new place to live. We move into “the parsonage.” It’s big. It has a huge stone fireplace and a sunroom and is on the 10 acres of church property, woods and fields and flowers and deer. I am in heaven. We rent out our house.

End Recap.

And here we are.
2010.
I think this is what I’m defining as progress, this feeling that I finally know who I am and am comfortable in that.

But don’t think for a minute I’ll stop making resolutions.  I’ve gotten way too good at it to quit.

Image courtesy of Sara. Nel.

It’s kind of funny. It’s actually January 2 as I write this post intended to grace the front page on January 1st. I was trying to get in on that whole new-year-resolutions craze. Silly. Silly because I’m at my sister’s house.

We spent the morning drinking coffee and trying to recover from lack of sleep while keeping our kids in a semi-clothed, fed, and healthy state. We watched the Rose Bowl Parade. We plowed through leftovers for lunch, talked, and tried to pry our male counterparts away from their iphones and laptops. We weren’t successful until after dinner, at which point we had to all pitch in and take care of getting kids ready for bed. Then we all sat around and played Quelf, Bananagrams, and Gin Rummy until about 5 minutes to midnight.

End Day 1 of my newly (un)resolved life.

All day long, as I could steal a few minutes here and there, I was working on a couple of posts to put up on Sister Wisdom today. But all day long, too much other great stuff was happening.

So I don’t have any really great inspirational ideas to share, no ten-steps to success or a helpful list of any kind. Instead, here are a few “snapshots” from my day:

• Tiptoeing in to see if Zeke, my 8-month-old, was awake yet, peering into the crib in the morning haze to see his bright blue eyes staring back at me.
• Making another pot of coffee for the second half of the Rose Parade.
• Stealing the remote after endless football games so we could watch America’s Funniest Videos instead…
• Chasing around Robbie, my 2-year-old, when attempted snot-wipes became an impromptu game of run-from-the-tickle-Mommy.
• Eating just onnnnnnne more gooey butter cookie.
• Watching Mara, my 3-and-a-half-year-old, successfully use the little build-in mouse on my Notebook to use a kids’ paint program. 3 1/2! Is that weird to anyone else?
• Listening to my nephew (7 years old) “help” my Dad play scrabble.
• Asking my niece (4 1/2 years old) to pose for a photo and getting her “I’m a serious rocker-girl” face with her new Moxie girl guitar.
• Uploading photos to the new digital photo frame for Dad… and then watching it cycle through them all as if I’d never seen them before.
• Listing all the things we won’t be able to eat (as we eat them) once we get home and start our diet.
• Laying on the bed beside my sister and her baby, looking at magazines and talking.
• Grinding the Magic Eraser down to nothing as my husband and my sister and I cleaned all the blue marker artwork off the wall, ceiling, and carpet, left there courtesy of Robbie in several unattended moments of creative outburst…
• Laughing hysterically at my Dad doing a slow-motion “Chariots of Fire” run around the kitchen, Cheryl (my stepMom) trying to balance a shoe on her head, Adam (my brother-in-law) flapping his arms and yelling “Chicken!”, and me trying to sing “Kumbaya” without laughing… all during the course of the first game we played.

Good times.

A Single Resolution


I’ll get myself more organized over the next few days, maybe. What I’ve managed to organize out of all my new year’s plans and possibilities is one cohesive thought: a single resolution to change what I can for the better, and to accept everything else with grace.
I know that breaks all the resolution advice. Goals are supposed to be specific, and measurable, and realistic…

Oh well. This thought, which has become my resolution, is ringing true. Acceptance is a way of finding peace, creating joy, and being thankful. Change involves action, and action means doing something about what frustrates, irritates, upsets, or worries me instead of just being frustrated, irritated, upset, and worried.

Change: moving forward in life, taking responsibility, putting energy to work, being a good steward, making things better.
Acceptance: letting go of control, receiving what comes, giving grace, being at peace, having a sense of humor, finding joy.

What’s your resolution?

Make it a good one.

It’s a movie day.

Mara and Robbie watched a Baby Einstein while they ate breakfast, and now they’re almost through “Finding Nemo.” And it’s not even 11:00…

Didactic Disney

The Disney movies are almost all didactic; I don’t like all the lessons they try to teach, but in the Nemo case I do. Dorie and Marlin are the example, the dichotomy through the movie. Marlin is anxious, nervous, stressed, fearful, paralyzed. Dorie is happy-go-lucky, adventurous, inquisitive, good-natured, joyful.

The Dichotomy

Marlin remembers every hurt, every pain, every fear realized.

Dorie forgets.

Marlin nurses his wounds, counts his scars, and resents.

Dorie accepts what comes her way, forgets the details, and sees life as an adventure.

Of course, the plot is set up so Marlin learns the lesson:you have to let go. You have to take risks to live life. You’ll get hurt, but getting hurt isn’t the end… unless you make it so.

Which Half Are You?

Do you forget the hurts, offenses, pains? The details that don’t matter? Do you let go of the disappointments and just hold on to the fact that when you’re with the ones you love, you are home?

Or do you cling to the past? Do you surround yourself with walls? Do you shut yourself in tighter and tighter? Do you work so hard at keeping yourself and the ones you love safe that you keep them away from life?

It’s Okay to Look Stupid.

Dorie is silly. She makes mistakes. She looks stupid sometimes (okay, a lot of the time). She is vulnerable. But she is alive and real and she has fun.

I’d rather look stupid and have fun than spend all my time trying to lock everything down, stressing out over being in control.

Robbie is snotty and cranky because his 2-year molars are coming through. Mara is snotty and cranky because… well, I don’t know why. There are baskets of laundry to put away, and more to wash. Dinner is looking like hot dogs. I just cleaned the house yesterday and it’s already dirty…

Time to Let Go

I’m going to be a little more like Dorie today. I’m going to forget about the details. So what if the kids watch too many movies today? We’ll snuggle on the couch while they do. So what if dinner isn’t some healthy, gourmet concoction? We’ll be together while we eat it.

Sing instead of stressing. Laugh instead of complaining. Come on, you can do it.

Image courtesy of prudencebrown121.