It's Turkey Day.

Open your newspaper.  Go on...  War, poverty, crime, politics.  Ok, a little bit of quarterbacks and comics, too.  Even look inside our own lives and sometimes it feels all you find is frustration, stress, and burdens that seem too heavy to bear.  In the midst of all that, there's something to like about a holiday whose entire purpose has become to force us to reflect on what good there is in our lives.  Instead of focusing on the negative, we get this day to look deeply into ourselves and find what it is we have that makes it worth getting up in the morning.

Family.  Love.  Food to eat and a place to live.  Friends with which to share our joys and hardships.  A job to work.  Your morning cup of coffee.  That moment of quiet after the children have gone to bed.  The first bite of chocolate.  The pink that tinges a morning sky.  Health.  A whispered "I love you, Mommy."

There are no "yeah, but"s on Thanksgiving.  We don't get to find our blessings and then explain them away, focusing on what's NOT okay.  No, today is about the good.  We take the time to find it.  We get to wrap ourselves up in it, revel in it, wear the good as a badge of honor.    On this day, we don't even have to apologize for the good.  On this day, embracing the good and ignoring the bad doesn't make you a braggart... it makes you Thanksgivingified.

When you sift through the hard stuff, what do you find?

This year, I find myself especially thankful for friendship...  new friendships, old friendships.  I'm thankful for forgiveness.  I'm thankful for understanding.  I'm deeply thankful for trust.  I'm thankful for friendship in the ordinary, and friendship in places I never expected.  I'm thankful for those who accept me for who I am, and love me anyway... I'm thankful for compassion, laughter, and words of kindness.

And if you're reading this, I'm probably thankful for you.

Tomorrow, when I get up... and it's no longer Thanksgiving...  when the turkey has been eaten, the last bit of pumpkin pie consumed...  there will still be hard things.  But there will also still be good, and I think the good will always outlast the hard.  I will still be very blessed... going to sleep with a smile on my lips, and waking up with a song in my heart.

*kinda feel like I should cue the Full House music right about now*

Packrats

Do you know a packrat?  I seem to be related to ALL of them.  My inlaws' house is truly a work of packrat art.  And lest my mother-in-law be reading this, let me just say... "Yes, I DO know where the fault of that lies."  I remember one summer, when my husband and I were dating, and it was our job to "clean out the boat" so a fishing trip could be had.  The boat wasn't dirty, mind you.  It had just become the catch-all for random junk in the garage.  I'm sure I couldn't stop the incredulity from my expression when we unloaded bag after bag after bag of styrofoam peanuts.  That's all.  Just the peanuts!  Who keeps those?  Who keeps SO MANY of those??

Or the vacation where I took it upon myself to go through all my mom's boxes of keepsakes and ruthlessly toss things that she really didn't need.  Now, look... I'm a mother.  I know what it is to want to keep that truly awful painting of a daisy to remember your child's preschool years by, or what have you.  But, I promise you... my mom had STACKS of timetests from my 1st and 2nd grade years.  TIME TESTS, people.  There is nothing even remotely "awww"-inspiring about math facts!  There just isn't.

I've always considered myself to NOT be a packrat.  I take great glee in regularly going through my house and tossing things.  Every season, I go through my clothes and toss what isn't getting worn.  I go through the kitchen drawers.  The kids' rooms.  The linen closet.  I AM NOT A PACKRAT.

I am realizing, however, that I have odd... accumulation... tendencies.  I like to accumulate stuff.  I just do.  And not just the physical things... I like joining things, maybe it's that I like accumulating people, too.  But I'm on a simplicity kick at the moment where I'm slowly going through my life and tossing things that I don't really need.

I started with my clothes...  put away the summer clothes, hung up the winter clothes.  Tried everything on.  And sometimes cocked my head and thought "Why on earth did I ever buy that?  Did I really think I needed prints so bright, they put the sun to shame?"

I moved on to my computer files, going through every folder on my computer... finding all the odd places I accidentally stashed things.  Sometimes laughing at old things I'd written, sometimes crying...  Sometimes I wondered how much Bailey's I'd had that night!

And this week, I'm on my email... not so much purging things that need to be purged.  But you know all those odd emails and whatnot that you sign up for?  Every morning, I get a deluge of emails.  It's not spam... I'm sure it's all things that I've registered for and agreed to receive.  But this week, instead of just deleting them on-sight, I've been carefully going through them and unsubscribing from the ones that I'm just not interested anymore.  That was going along swimmingly... until I got the one from the ketchup company.

It just made me stop and wonder... "WHY WHY WHY did I sign up for a ketchup newsletter?"  It's not even an interesting condiment!!  It's KETCHUP.  What possessed me to think that I would ever one day REALLY need whatever wild ketchup-based recipe was buried in the depths of its 57th newsletter.  (Ha!  Ha!  Did you see what I did there?  Oh... never mind.)

I know it's a bit silly to start pondering life things... from ketchup.  But it really made me start thinking of how much I gather into my life that is just silly or unneeded or simply cumbersome.  It made me think about what things are in my home, my car, my schedule, my world that are doing nothing but weighing me down.  And it made me realize that, while I may not have 40 bags of styrofoam peanuts in my boat, I'm a packrat of a different kind...

Simplicity kicks are all well and good... but if you don't KEEP being simple after you've cleaned everything out, you've really changed nothing.  And I think that simple is good.

"That's it?"

"When can I get my ears pierced, Mom?"
"When you're 8."

That was the deal.

And yet, when 8 years old came around, no one actually wanted to get them done.  So we've waited until it became important enough to them to cross the "I'm freaked out" barrier.  Just recently, it arrived.  Casey and Alicia have both been making noises about really wanting to get them done.  But I've sort of dragged my feet about it, just putting off the trip to the mall with a bunch of kids.

Today, though, I was out with Casey and McKenzie and we passed a Claire's.

"Mom, Mom!  Can I get my ears pierced today?"

More out of habit than anything else, I said "Not today..."  and then thought "Well, why not?"  So after we'd eaten lunch, we headed over to Claire's and started the process.  On the way down the mallway, Casey asked "How much does it hurt?  Is it just a pinch?  Or like a shot?  Or like they've ripped your ear off?"

"Honey," I answered.  "I'm very old.  It's been a really long time since I've had my ears pierced, but I don't remember it being much more than a shot."

"Okay."

We walked in the door and the first question out of my daughter's mouth to the saleslady was "Does it hurt?"  But still... she's in control.  She's fine.  She wanted to do this.

We got signed up.  We picked out the earrings she wanted.  She climbed up in the chair.  And the tears started to fall...  Now that the moment was here, the fear of the unknown was looming large.  "I'm really scared," she cried.

Do you know how hard it is to keep that no-nonsense demeanor when your child is literally falling apart before your eyes?  But I was strong... "Suck it up, kid, and get over it!"  No, I'm kidding.  I DID tell her that she could choose to back out now if she wanted, but that if she wanted them done, we needed to just do it and get it over with.

Tears still rolling down her cheeks, she decided that she wanted to go ahead with it, and I nodded to the Claire's lady.  The earring...thingie... was put to her ear, I stood in front of her and held her hands tightly, and murmured hopefully-encouraging things as the panic become more and more visible on her face.  And then...

"That was it?"  Surprise washed over her.  "Well, that wasn't so bad."  And it was done.

Relieved that we'd gotten through it without an earring-infused bloodbath or a hole through her head, I was struck by how like that I can be sometimes.  I build something up in my head SO BIG.  I worry about it.  I fret about it.  I think of every possible thing that could go wrong.  I play the situation over and over in my head.  I tell myself that this is so I can roleplay any inevitable outcome...  but really, every subsequent run-through just makes me more and more nervous.  I make myself literally CRAZY.

And then it happens... and it's never as bad as I thought it was going to be.

And all I can do is murmur a bewildered "That's it?"

A Personal Challenge

"Be the actor of your own life and not the spectator of mine."  

That's perhaps worded more strongly than I would write the sentiment... but maybe it's the force of the statement that made me sit up and wince.  Have you ever been guilty of this?  I know I have.  What is it that makes us get so focused on what the people around us are doing, and completely neglect to give the same attention to our own actions?

"Did you see what Jessica wore to the party on Friday??"  "Have you heard what Kevin said to Terri?"  "Can you believe the way Erin was throwing herself at Rick?"  "Dear Jesus... please forgive Lori for her drinking problem."

On the one hand, I'm not sure what it is that makes us think that we are so perfect that we could survive the same scrutiny from those around us.  But on the other, if we gave the same attention to our own actions, devoted the same energy that we do to criticizing others' faults to minimizing our own, concentrated on making our own lives better, rather than ripping others' apart... how much richer would our lives be?

I challenge myself to this in the coming week...  every time I'm tempted to criticize someone else for the choices they've made or the actions they're taking, I will instead look to myself and find something personal to devote that energy to.

We'll just see what ends up happier...

Sweet Potatoes

Joel:  I cannot find sweet potatoes anywhere.

Me:  What do you mean?  They should be RIGHT THERE by the potatoes.  Are you looking at 7-11?

Joel:  No!  I've looked at Fred Meyer and QFC... I swear they aren't there.

Me:  I think you're on crack.

Joel:  Yes.  Yes, I said 'I can't find any sweet potatoes... I think I'll go get some crack instead.'

And it begins!

You'll have to forgive me, but I'm a little rusty at this.  I've not kept a blog for nearly three years, and I'm afraid that I might have forgotten how to do it.

I feel like I should introduce myself, even though most of you reading this right now already know me.  But you never know - three years down the road when this blog is famous for its stellar wit (hey, it could happen!), someone might say "Gee, I wonder what she wrote in her first entry!" - and here it will be!

My name is Joanne, although I'm not sure I know anyone who actually calls me that.  Jo, Joey, Jojo, Butthead (little sisters are the best)... sometimes when some stranger calls me "Joanne," I look around in search of who they're talking to before I realize it's me!

I'm 34 (in 2010), but tell my kids I'm 25.  Unfortunately, they've now figured out how to subtract, and have deduced that, if they're 10 years old, I am unlikely to be the age I tell them.  But, they usually let me have my illusions, anyway.

I've been married for 14 years to my high school sweetheart, Joel.  Go ahead... "Awwww!!"  He's a very good and funny man, and I'm a lucky girl.  He's beyond smart and works for Microsoft.  Please don't ask me what he does.  I don't know.  It's not that I don't care.  It's just so far over my head and changes so often that by the time I've figured out what he's doing, he's been promoted or transferred to something else, and I have to start all over.

We have three daughters, of whom you will likely hear a great deal.  McKenzie and Casey are 10 year old identical twins, with Alicia following 16 months younger at 9.

McKenzie is a real interesting little thing.  Born eight weeks early, she had the hardest start as a baby, on a ventilator at birth, followed by being on oxygen until she was three months old.  Physically, I consider this the explanation for why she is the way she is.  But, I'm not sure I would change the way she is, either.  Joel and I can often be caught saying, "McKenzie is... special."  Huge attention span issues, no concept of how to control her emotions...  but mostly, she's simply a square peg in a world of round holes.  She just doesn't think in the same way that other people do, but she's always challenging me to think outside the box.

Like the other day, she said "Mom, you know the story of Adam and Eve... how Eve ate a bite of the apple and then Adam ate a bite of the apple...  What happened to the rest of the apple?"  What, indeed! I've heard the story of Eden since I was a kid, and I'm not sure I've ever considered the fate of that half-eaten fruit.  But McKenzie has.

Her twin, Casey, is a really sweet girl, a puppy lover through and through.  Very tall for her age, people sometimes mistake her for being much older than the child she still is.  Puberty has found her a bit early, and she is often in the middle of some mega-hormonal mood swing, wailing "I don't know why I'm crying!!!!"  Good times.  She's a good girl, typically kind and thoughtful.  Personality-wise, we often clash in mother-daughter power struggles.

Today, after the fourth nasty remark in a row, I asked in exasperation, "Casey, can't you be nice to your sister for FIVE MINUTES??"

"But you weren't always nice to YOUR sisters when you were little!  Don't you want me to do what you do??"

"No, I don't want you to do what I do!  I want you to do what I tell you to do!"  I should note now that if you are looking for a blog with advice on how to win Mother of the Year, you should probably keep looking.

Finally, we have my youngest daughter, Alicia.  Quiet to those who don't know her, she is easily the most responsible of my kids.  I fear that this sometimes makes me rely on her more than I should.  She's a hard worker when motivated and loves to help out.  Where her sisters are inadvertently funny, Alicia is deliberately funny.  She has incredible comedic timing for a kid of her age, and she is always making me laugh with the snarky comments that will come out of her mouth.

So there we go!  I have much more I want to say, but this is so long already that I think we will save it for the next post.  Stay tuned and thanks for reading!