There’s a lot of soul music playing here this week. I realize that with my last post about organization, this blog is quickly becoming a collection of my completely random and whimsical thoughts. I’m not sure I can stop that, though.
I had an entire week without kids. The kids went to stay with their dad for the break and it was a much-needed chance for me to back up, breathe a little, and think.
I got a lot of work done. And I cleaned the house. I hung out with friends. And I thought. A lot. This week’s thoughts were centered around the one that got away, and love in general.
We all have that one, I think. Maybe it’s more bittersweet for those of us who married someone else and then had that marriage not work out. It begs for looking at the other relationship, the really good one we didn’t pursue. The one we thought we were too good for.
I had that relationship once, with a guy who was truly amazing. And I wasn’t mature enough to see him for who he was. I’m kicking myself on that one.
I wouldn’t and can’t change anything. I have two fabulous kids, products of a marriage with the one I really wish had gotten away. But I wouldn’t really wish that unless there was still some way I could keep the kids. When you have two beautiful children, what right do you have to complain? I don’t.
I held on too long to things I should've let go. I think all my life, I've taken a project I wanted to fix at the expense of a masterpiece I was too busy to look for. I'm choosier now.
I like to indulge in the occasional daydream. This week I found my mind wandering to what it would be like if we met again. Except it wouldn’t be like that. He married someone else. I married someone else. His worked out, mine didn’t. So this week has been a true lesson in grace, because despite what I now wish would've happened for us, I can’t be anything but happy for him.
There’s a lot to lose in life and love. I hope if you’re reading this and you have someone really important to hold on to, that you grab them and squeeze them tight. Life’s too short for what if’s. I’m squeezing mine, these two little people around whom my entire world is centered.
If you're holding on to something simply for the sake of holding on to it, it might be time to let it go. Don't make my mistake and try to change what you have into what you need.
If that great guy comes again, I think maybe I’ll be ready to recognize him the second time around. Lesson learned.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Spring Gleaning
It always amazes me how quickly my perspective can change. Okay, so sometimes there’s a distinct reason for it (starts with horm-, ends with –ones). Other times, it seems like two or three small things happen and suddenly everything shifts in a completely topsy-turvy way that just begs for a time-out, a rewind button, or a large bottle of wine…or all three.
That’s been the last couple of weeks here. I don’t know about you, but when things start to feel crazy around here I shift into Assessment and Planning Mode. Yes, I’m completely anal-retentive and obsessive-compulsive about having a plan. You would never know this to see my house. Or my kids. Or me, for that matter.
I’m an excellent planner. And goal-setter. And organizer. Unfortunately, I can also be a dismal follow-through-er. So, in the interest of accountability – because I know at the very least my Dad will read this and probably ask at some point how it’s going – I’ve decided to list some specific areas in which I need to focus my planning (and following through) skills…
• My closet and clothes. I may or may not have mentioned my extreme lack of any fashion sense. Seriously. If Fashion-Challenged was a recognized disability, they could base the DSM-IV criteria on only the clothes I’ve worn in public in the last three days. I don’t do it on purpose. I seriously have no idea how to put a “real” outfit together beyond liking what I see other (more stylish) people wear.
Therefore, it’s time to attack that closet and weed out the items that are hopelessly out of fashion (30%), not going to fit again before becoming hopelessly out of fashion (25%), and set aside items that will hopefully fit again soon and are the plain, never-go-out-of-style sort of items I tend to favor (30%). If you’re doing the math, that should leave me roughly 15% of what’s currently in there. At least I’ll know what I have to work with.
• My kids. I probably should’ve put this first; putting it second makes my priorities seem a little out of whack. However, in my defense, you haven’t actually seen my closet. The kid-planning is simple – I’d like to plan at least two small but purposeful things to do with them each week that we actually do regardless of how busy I am, how cranky they are and which one of them seems to be coming down with something. There is NEVER a day one of those things isn’t a factor and it’s time to get over it.
• My work. Possibly also should’ve appeared before closet, but…oh, well. I have work, which is always a blessing for the self-employed. But, I have some time-budgeting and long-term planning that needs to be done. It’s time to really define the direction I want to take things and refine my plan for getting there.
• My house. Specifically, the lack of decorating in my house. I see such cute ideas online and from friends’ posts/blogs/etc. but I never actually plan to carry any of them out. (Lack of fashion sense also lends itself to lack of decorating style.) The first room to attack will be the living room and its almost-bare walls…and windows…and floors.
There. That gives me some specific places to start. Which brings me to the title of this post. I’ve always liked the word glean. To me, it implies working hard at something to get something fruitful from it. For instance, we can glean knowledge and encouragement from Scripture and glean wisdom from tough experiences.
I hope to glean something from the act of carrying out the items above. Are they small things? Yes. But they’re small things I can do. Sometimes, when you need a plan you can actually act on, that’s all that matters.
I’d love to hear your plan for some Spring Gleaning of your own!
That’s been the last couple of weeks here. I don’t know about you, but when things start to feel crazy around here I shift into Assessment and Planning Mode. Yes, I’m completely anal-retentive and obsessive-compulsive about having a plan. You would never know this to see my house. Or my kids. Or me, for that matter.
I’m an excellent planner. And goal-setter. And organizer. Unfortunately, I can also be a dismal follow-through-er. So, in the interest of accountability – because I know at the very least my Dad will read this and probably ask at some point how it’s going – I’ve decided to list some specific areas in which I need to focus my planning (and following through) skills…
• My closet and clothes. I may or may not have mentioned my extreme lack of any fashion sense. Seriously. If Fashion-Challenged was a recognized disability, they could base the DSM-IV criteria on only the clothes I’ve worn in public in the last three days. I don’t do it on purpose. I seriously have no idea how to put a “real” outfit together beyond liking what I see other (more stylish) people wear.
Therefore, it’s time to attack that closet and weed out the items that are hopelessly out of fashion (30%), not going to fit again before becoming hopelessly out of fashion (25%), and set aside items that will hopefully fit again soon and are the plain, never-go-out-of-style sort of items I tend to favor (30%). If you’re doing the math, that should leave me roughly 15% of what’s currently in there. At least I’ll know what I have to work with.
• My kids. I probably should’ve put this first; putting it second makes my priorities seem a little out of whack. However, in my defense, you haven’t actually seen my closet. The kid-planning is simple – I’d like to plan at least two small but purposeful things to do with them each week that we actually do regardless of how busy I am, how cranky they are and which one of them seems to be coming down with something. There is NEVER a day one of those things isn’t a factor and it’s time to get over it.
• My work. Possibly also should’ve appeared before closet, but…oh, well. I have work, which is always a blessing for the self-employed. But, I have some time-budgeting and long-term planning that needs to be done. It’s time to really define the direction I want to take things and refine my plan for getting there.
• My house. Specifically, the lack of decorating in my house. I see such cute ideas online and from friends’ posts/blogs/etc. but I never actually plan to carry any of them out. (Lack of fashion sense also lends itself to lack of decorating style.) The first room to attack will be the living room and its almost-bare walls…and windows…and floors.
There. That gives me some specific places to start. Which brings me to the title of this post. I’ve always liked the word glean. To me, it implies working hard at something to get something fruitful from it. For instance, we can glean knowledge and encouragement from Scripture and glean wisdom from tough experiences.
I hope to glean something from the act of carrying out the items above. Are they small things? Yes. But they’re small things I can do. Sometimes, when you need a plan you can actually act on, that’s all that matters.
I’d love to hear your plan for some Spring Gleaning of your own!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Laughing Like Crying
It makes sense to share a story from the beginning – the beginning of this season of my life, that is. I don’t plan on making this blog a chronological account of the last year and a half. But it’s probably a good idea to establish a frame of reference for you.
My marriage ended suddenly. It had been ending for a while before that, but there was one defining event that marked the End – and I didn’t get any advance notice. I’m not going to share the details of what happened because a) it’s too personal to post online, and b) my kids might read this one day.
The kids were 6 and 2-almost-3. Grant, who’s older, was on vacation with his grandmother at the time. I thank God for the timing of that.
Julia and I left suddenly, literally threw a weekend’s worth of clothes in a bag and fled to the home of a friend, who generously allowed us to stay there while their family was out of town. I remember saying a prayer of thanks for their extensive collection of Disney princess movies because I was in too much shock to function.
During the weekend, I made it clear we were returning to the house late Sunday afternoon and my ex-husband was to be gone. I was prepared to feel panicky, sad, angry, scared, relieved, any emotion you can think of.
I was not prepared for what the house looked like when we returned. It was like the morning after a bad frat party.
I began the cleaning process and cried through a lot of it. My attitude lightened a little. Everything else aside, I was relieved. It was quiet and calm and I realized it was finally just the kids and me.
I’d been thinking for a long time about what it would be like to live in peace with my children with no hostility, no tumultuous marriage making it impossible to breathe in the house. I began having little fantasies of how calm and happy we would be with our neat little organized lives. Ha. ☺
Grant came home and my first night with both kids there, I was exhausted but remarkably gung-ho about how much better everything was going to be. I took Julia upstairs to give her a bath with visions of a nice, quiet evening of storytime and cuddling. Until I got her undressed. And she promptly had a very messy accident, the details of which I’ll spare you, all over the bathroom floor. Towels, please.
About halfway through cleaning the bathroom floor, I heard Grant calling for me, sounding fully panicked. I left the rest of the mess and sprinted downstairs to find he had overflowed the toilet in the powder room. There was literally a flood of water flowing out into the family room. Ummm, more towels, please.
I used every towel in the house. Grant was running around shrieking that we would surely drown. Julia, still with no clothes on and REALLY needing a bath now, had joined in the mayhem. I took some deep breaths. One thing at a time.
I still hadn’t touched the master bedroom, but realizing I now had about 50 loads of towels to wash, it was a good a time as any to get those sheets off the bed and throw them in. I looked like I was cleaning up a toxic spill the way I grabbed the corner of the sheets with pinched fingers while trying to keep my body as far away from the bed as possible.
And then I found the ants – a million tiny little ants, crawling all over the mattress. I don’t even want to think about what attracted them there but I can tell you I almost lost it right then and there.
I did get the sheets and a few towels in the wash. I think I used an entire bottle of bleach. With the kind of determination that can only be God-given, I pulled out the vacuum cleaner, stepped up onto the mattress, and went to war with those ants.
So there I was – standing on a mattress, vacuuming ants, soaking wet towels on the floor of more than one bathroom in the house, with my children running around screaming, Kill the ants! Kill the ants! And yes, Julia was still naked and filthy at this point.
In the middle of it all, I began laughing. Hysterically and uncontrollably. In reality, it was probably sobbing but it came out as the kind of maniacal laughter I’m glad no adults or mental health professionals were around to witness.
I still think about that girl sometimes, the girl I was in that moment – standing on the bed with the vacuum, laughing hysterically. I’m so proud she didn’t give up. I’ve grown a lot since then...in large part because laughing, like crying, heals.
My marriage ended suddenly. It had been ending for a while before that, but there was one defining event that marked the End – and I didn’t get any advance notice. I’m not going to share the details of what happened because a) it’s too personal to post online, and b) my kids might read this one day.
The kids were 6 and 2-almost-3. Grant, who’s older, was on vacation with his grandmother at the time. I thank God for the timing of that.
Julia and I left suddenly, literally threw a weekend’s worth of clothes in a bag and fled to the home of a friend, who generously allowed us to stay there while their family was out of town. I remember saying a prayer of thanks for their extensive collection of Disney princess movies because I was in too much shock to function.
During the weekend, I made it clear we were returning to the house late Sunday afternoon and my ex-husband was to be gone. I was prepared to feel panicky, sad, angry, scared, relieved, any emotion you can think of.
I was not prepared for what the house looked like when we returned. It was like the morning after a bad frat party.
I began the cleaning process and cried through a lot of it. My attitude lightened a little. Everything else aside, I was relieved. It was quiet and calm and I realized it was finally just the kids and me.
I’d been thinking for a long time about what it would be like to live in peace with my children with no hostility, no tumultuous marriage making it impossible to breathe in the house. I began having little fantasies of how calm and happy we would be with our neat little organized lives. Ha. ☺
Grant came home and my first night with both kids there, I was exhausted but remarkably gung-ho about how much better everything was going to be. I took Julia upstairs to give her a bath with visions of a nice, quiet evening of storytime and cuddling. Until I got her undressed. And she promptly had a very messy accident, the details of which I’ll spare you, all over the bathroom floor. Towels, please.
About halfway through cleaning the bathroom floor, I heard Grant calling for me, sounding fully panicked. I left the rest of the mess and sprinted downstairs to find he had overflowed the toilet in the powder room. There was literally a flood of water flowing out into the family room. Ummm, more towels, please.
I used every towel in the house. Grant was running around shrieking that we would surely drown. Julia, still with no clothes on and REALLY needing a bath now, had joined in the mayhem. I took some deep breaths. One thing at a time.
I still hadn’t touched the master bedroom, but realizing I now had about 50 loads of towels to wash, it was a good a time as any to get those sheets off the bed and throw them in. I looked like I was cleaning up a toxic spill the way I grabbed the corner of the sheets with pinched fingers while trying to keep my body as far away from the bed as possible.
And then I found the ants – a million tiny little ants, crawling all over the mattress. I don’t even want to think about what attracted them there but I can tell you I almost lost it right then and there.
I did get the sheets and a few towels in the wash. I think I used an entire bottle of bleach. With the kind of determination that can only be God-given, I pulled out the vacuum cleaner, stepped up onto the mattress, and went to war with those ants.
So there I was – standing on a mattress, vacuuming ants, soaking wet towels on the floor of more than one bathroom in the house, with my children running around screaming, Kill the ants! Kill the ants! And yes, Julia was still naked and filthy at this point.
In the middle of it all, I began laughing. Hysterically and uncontrollably. In reality, it was probably sobbing but it came out as the kind of maniacal laughter I’m glad no adults or mental health professionals were around to witness.
I still think about that girl sometimes, the girl I was in that moment – standing on the bed with the vacuum, laughing hysterically. I’m so proud she didn’t give up. I’ve grown a lot since then...in large part because laughing, like crying, heals.
Friday, April 1, 2011
The Booger on the Wall
Tonight I got completely sidetracked reading archived posts of a blog I absolutely love but haven’t read in a long time due to the regular busyness and distractions of life. (That blog is Naptime Diaries if you’re interested.) It reminded me how much I’ve always wanted to blog regularly. I did actually attempt this once, written from the perspective of my daughter when she was a toddler. The results: Fail. Big fail. I think there were a whopping three posts, maybe six months apart.
I digress. More recently, I’ve thought about it more. Specifically, when I separated from my now ex-husband a year and a half ago, one of my first thoughts was – I should start a blog. Not about our marriage or what went wrong, but because I was officially entering the next stage of my life and I had stories to tell. Still do. I promise to post about the not-at-all-at-the-time-but-in-retrospect-hilarious comedy of errors that were my first days, weeks, and months of being a single mom. Rich with high jinx, I promise.
Life as a suddenly single mom with two small children and a full-time job doesn’t leave a lot of time for blogging. And over time, I questioned what I was really looking for in starting a blog – would I just be creating a platform for a full-time pity party, looking for some kind of approval, or did I really have something worthwhile and/or entertaining to share? It’s worth noting that all of the wrestling over these questions took place without ever writing a single post. And I'm a writer. For a living. Sad, I know.
As of late, I still have lots of high jinx. Things have settled down a bit, but I’m nowhere near having it “together” – does anybody? I do think I have stories to share. They will hopefully entertain and amuse, maybe even occasionally inspire something more.
After getting lost in Naptime Diaries for over an hour (maybe two), I got up from the couch thinking, ‘Yep, I should definitely start blogging.’ I went to the bathroom in the little powder room meant for guests but mostly used by the kids. I normally don’t use that bathroom and when I sat down, I realized two things.
First, it doesn’t smell good in there. Either the kids need to stop using it or I should never again have guests over. There’s going to be some hardcore scrubbing going on in there tomorrow, followed by a full can of Febreeze air freshener.
Second, when I happened to glance at the wall next to me, I realized there was something stuck there. It was easily identifiable as a booger. One of the kids (I can guess which one) stuck a booger on the wall. The whole ‘the writing’s on the wall’ thing popped into my head. But for me, in my life, it’s only fitting that The Booger’s on the Wall. Yep, I’ve got stories to share.
I digress. More recently, I’ve thought about it more. Specifically, when I separated from my now ex-husband a year and a half ago, one of my first thoughts was – I should start a blog. Not about our marriage or what went wrong, but because I was officially entering the next stage of my life and I had stories to tell. Still do. I promise to post about the not-at-all-at-the-time-but-in-retrospect-hilarious comedy of errors that were my first days, weeks, and months of being a single mom. Rich with high jinx, I promise.
Life as a suddenly single mom with two small children and a full-time job doesn’t leave a lot of time for blogging. And over time, I questioned what I was really looking for in starting a blog – would I just be creating a platform for a full-time pity party, looking for some kind of approval, or did I really have something worthwhile and/or entertaining to share? It’s worth noting that all of the wrestling over these questions took place without ever writing a single post. And I'm a writer. For a living. Sad, I know.
As of late, I still have lots of high jinx. Things have settled down a bit, but I’m nowhere near having it “together” – does anybody? I do think I have stories to share. They will hopefully entertain and amuse, maybe even occasionally inspire something more.
After getting lost in Naptime Diaries for over an hour (maybe two), I got up from the couch thinking, ‘Yep, I should definitely start blogging.’ I went to the bathroom in the little powder room meant for guests but mostly used by the kids. I normally don’t use that bathroom and when I sat down, I realized two things.
First, it doesn’t smell good in there. Either the kids need to stop using it or I should never again have guests over. There’s going to be some hardcore scrubbing going on in there tomorrow, followed by a full can of Febreeze air freshener.
Second, when I happened to glance at the wall next to me, I realized there was something stuck there. It was easily identifiable as a booger. One of the kids (I can guess which one) stuck a booger on the wall. The whole ‘the writing’s on the wall’ thing popped into my head. But for me, in my life, it’s only fitting that The Booger’s on the Wall. Yep, I’ve got stories to share.
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