An Anniversary

"I was wondering if, maybe on your way back from visiting Oregon, you'd want to stop in Tacoma on your way home and go to coffee?" the email read.

What?  No!  I mean, not that I don't drink coffee, but this was so far out of my comfort zone.  We'd never met.  I knew the girl online, and I liked her...  but we'd never met.  Sure, I could do a good job maintaining a perky demeanor online... Online is easy.  There is a screen to hide behind.  But, in person, she wouldn't like me!  I knew she wouldn't like me!  And there would be uncomfortable silence when I couldn't hold up my end of the conversation, because I totally suck at small talk.  And then she would start checking her watch, wondering how long she had to sit there pretending to like me until she could escape back to her car.  And then the online place we both frequented would be totally awkward.  And then I would cry.  Probably in my car.  Resulting in a 40-car pileup on I-5.  (Not that I really NEED tears to cause vehicular chaos, but still.)  And she still wouldn't like me.  (Plus, she liked that Keith guy and he made me insane.)

So I did the mature, responsible, non-rude thing...  I... totally and completely ignored the email.  Oh yes.  Points to me for class.

And that would have been that, probably... were it not for an event we both attended in Seattle for the Irishy group we both liked.  And oh I am so glad for that event.  It was the first time any of us had met any of the members of the group, or their bodyguard.  There was just something about that day.  Lisa and I simply clicked.  I should have gone to coffee!!!  Fortuitously, the event in question was AT Starbucks, so it kinda counts?  maybe?  No?  Ok, no.

Well, but we clicked.  And we've BEEN clicking ever since that day.  Brought together by a bunch of cute sing-y Irish guys...  but we've stayed together because we're friends.  We've shared some of the most fun experiences...  some that revolve around CT, sure...  concerts, the saga of CT street teams.  Trips to shows...  Portland, Vancouver, Toronto... But, too, just trips here with our kids.  Hiking at Mt Rainier, a series of trips to the WA coast to catch the elusive sunset over the ocean, the zoo.  It really doesn't matter to me what we do...  just the chance to spend time together is precious.

It was three years ago today that we met at Starbucks... An anniversary of sorts.  Happy Anniversary, my dear friend!  I love you!  Deflowering was the first of so many happy things we've done together... and I hope that we have many more to come!

Tell them.

I've always remembered this from my school days.  Once, in math class, our teacher stopped teaching and told us all to get out a sheet of paper.  We were to write the name of every student in our class, one per line.  For the rest of the class period, we were instructed to write one nice thing about each student.  Something we liked about them, something we admired, something we envied.  The rest of the class was quiet.  Not sure if we'd just been really naughty or if she'd run out of lesson plans!

The next day, we came to class and we were given our own sheet.  Our name was across the top, and below was pasted everything said about us by our classmates.  We all read them in silence, but you could hear mutters of "I had no idea they thought that.." or "I never knew anyone noticed that..." break the quiet.  By the time we were done, we were all beaming.  20-something reasons that people liked us, 20+ things that people admired about us.  20+ things that made it good to be us.  And until that moment, there were so many of them that we just didn't know.

Why?

Because no one says them.  We all have people we admire, people we respect, people we like.  So often, we just don't tell them.  Maybe we think they already know.  Maybe we think that THEY'll think we're off our rocker if we tell them. Maybe we just simply get lazy and don't think about it.

But how easy would it be?  How easy would it be to tell the people in our lives why we like them, why they're special to us, why we're glad that they're in our lives?  It costs us nothing... but would create so much joy.

What is stopping us today?  And why are we letting it?

Saturday Evening Freebie... Are You Beautiful?

Note: I penned this several years ago...  but I think it remains one of my favorite things I've ever written.

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I recently watched my daughters play dress-up. They got out all of their dancing clothes. Pink flowy dresses that spread way out when they spun in circles. Purple sparkly dress-up high heels. Strands of beads. White gloves. The whole package. They grabbed their "princes" (their favorite stuffed animals), put on a Barbie soundtrack and spun in circles, dancing for half an hour. I watched delight spread over their faces as they practiced being beautiful.

I can remember doing that as a child. I can remember the tutus and the spinning dresses. I remember putting on my mom's records while my sisters and I made up dance routines to Olivia Newton-John and Chariots of Fire. We made my mom sit through them as they were performed. Over and over and over and over again. I remember bowing and watching my mom's face for a look. The one that said "You are beautiful and I adore you." I usually got it and my mom made me believe that, at 6 years old, I was beautiful.

I sit here today and wonder when I did something like that last? When did I do something beautiful for the sheer act of being beautiful? When did I truly FEEL that I, Joanne, was beautiful? FOR REAL. Not just pretty. Not just cute. Not just nice-looking. Not just "not-bad"... but really and truly beautiful. Where does that go?

I KNOW the desire is there. DEEPLY THERE. Last week, I exchanged "Friday pictures" with a bunch of my girlfriends. We all snapped pictures of each other with our digital cameras and emailed them to each other, accompanied by excuses for why we didn't look perfect. What followed was wave after wave of "You are so beautiful," "You look like you've lost a lot of weight," "I love your hhyuyuyiair!" "I would kill for your lips!" I can't speak for the rest of the women, but for me? I was beaming. To be told that I was beautiful?? That someone envied something about the way I looked? It made my whole MONTH.

We desperately want to know that we're beautiful. And I don't think it's just a shallow thing. I watch my daughters... I watch their delight when their daddy pays attention to them, tells them he loves them, tells them that they are his beautiful angels. I see the ecstasy that passes over them, and THAT'S REAL. AND GOOD. I don't believe the desire to be loved and cherished by their dad is a culture thing. It's a God thing. God created us to be beautiful. Unashamedly beautiful.  Not the ONLY reason He created us, certainly. But, He created us in beauty.

So where did it all go wrong? Why are there SO MANY women who don't believe they are beautiful?? Why are there so many women who believe that they are not enough? Don't believe me? Go look at any weight loss forum. Go look at the HUGE number of women's magazines that are out there teaching us how to be more beautiful. We do not have faith in our own beauty. And we are looking for anything to tell us how to get there.

Do you wanna know a secret, girls? You won't find the answer in Cosmopolitan. Or Vogue. Or In Style. Or in Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, or Atkins. Because it doesn't have anything to do with what you physically look like. It has to do with being comfortable with the WOMAN you were made you to be. It means wearing the skin of a woman like you were born to it. AND YOU WERE. We've bought into the world's idea of beauty. Supermodel. Miss America. The right figure. The right makeup. The right hair. But beauty isn't about that.

This may not be a perfect example... but you know who I think is REALLY beautiful? I mean, REALLY beautiful. Queen Latifah. You know why? Because she's not Cyndi Crawford. She is not the typical traditional idea of beauty. She's not petite! She's not thin. But, I think she's totally sexy because she seems to be comfortable with herself.  She isn't shy about being fully herself. 

When I was 16, I started dating a boy. Poor guy, he didn't know what he was in for. He liked me. He really really liked me. And I had a very hard time believing him. He thought I was pretty. No, he thought I was BEAUTIFUL. He told me so every day that we were together. After a year, I started to believe I was pretty. After two years, I started to believe I was beautiful. After three years, I truly believed I was beautiful. AND IT SHOWED. My looks didn't really change that much. Oh, the acne settled down a little. And I learned a little more about makeup. But what really changed my looks was my belief about myself. I BELIEVED I WAS BEAUTIFUL. I BELIEVED I WAS SEXY AND ATTRACTIVE. And what do you know... AFTER I started truly believing it, I noticed turned heads. They may have started turning before, but I don't really believe they did. I believe that they started turning because I exuded a confidence and a belief in myself that I never had before.

That's half the puzzle, I think. Believing in yourself. Not to steal from a current popular book.. but I'm reading it right now, and I thought it was brilliant.  In Captivating, John and Stasi Elderidge write that as we grow from girls, and we get told (in one form or another) that we are not enough, that we are not important, that we are not beautiful, we hide our beauty.  We hide what God created.  Some women become controlling and overbearing... some women become meek and adamant that they will not be a hindrance, will not be a bother, and retreat into themselves.  BOTH extremes (and the spectrum between the two that many of us will find ourselves on) are our defense mechanisms.  They keep us from being hurt.  It's what we use to shield ourselves and keep our souls from being trampled.

But, girls...  they hide us.  They hide our beauty.  They hide who we were created to be.  Let go of your inhibitions.  Let go of the masks.  Let go of the hurt. Let go of the defenses.  YOU DON'T NEED THEM.  Embrace who you are.  Embrace God's love for you.  Embrace the blessings He's placed in your life.

Go get a mirror.  Or run back and forth between the computer and the bathroom.  Look at yourself in the mirror.  Don't look at your parts.  Too often, I look in the mirror and I see eyes that crinkle up way too much when I smile.  Or a nose with too many zits.  Or eyebrows that are in desperate need of plucking. But I never see the whole package.  Look past your facial FEATURES and see YOU.  See who those who love you see when they look at you.  Now repeat after me.

I AM A WOMAN.  I AM BEAUTIFUL.  I AM LOVED.  I AM IMPORTANT.  I AM CHERISHED.  I AM CHOSEN.

Now go strut your stuff.

Don't watch.

I was 16 years old with a new boyfriend.  With a tournament coming, he wanted to go to the driving range and practice his golf swing.  I wanted to spend time with him, so I bravely decided that I could learn to play golf, too.  I'd never DONE so before, unless you count the miniature golf course at Putt n Video.  But, I was intent on being impressive! He showed me a few tips on how to stand, how to hold the club, how to shift my weight at the right point in the swing.  And then he let me have my way with that bucket of balls. (Shush.)

Did I mention I'd never done this before?  I took a couple swings, missed them both, and realized that... I was probably not going to be terribly successful.  As I pretended to ready myself for the next swing, I watched the other golfers.  I watched what they were doing, how they were standing, how they were holding the club.  I squared myself off... and still watched.  I swung the club back, and still watched.  I swung, and still watched.  And missed.  Because I was still watching.

I wasn't watching what I was doing.  I was watching what they were doing.  And you can't be successful if all you're doing is watching everyone else.

I was thinking about that today... it applies to more than just golf.  There is this, perhaps human nature, tendency to focus on what others are doing.  Who they're talking to, what they're saying, what they're doing.  It feeds our need for gossip.  It feeds our need to make ourselves feel superior to those around us.

But it's not good.  And it's not healthy.  And it's not kind.  Not to us, and to them.  We can't be successful or good if all we're interested in is what others are doing.  Learning to let go, learning to not care, learning to not watch... When I am successful at THESE things, I am the most successful.  I am the most happy.  I am the most healthy.

I freely confess that not watching is a struggle for me.  The gossip is tempting.  But, when I can make myself be strong and when I can make myself not worry so much about what others are doing or thinking, my life is so much better, calmer, and happier.

It just doesn't matter.

#100

Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.
Rose Kennedy



This is my 100th blogpost since returning to blogging.  It took me a couple starts and stops to really get into it again, but I'm here now.  There is a feeling of personal expectation that your milestones should reflect something grand.  That, if there was ever a time to say something wise and profound, this is it... something to make the 100th post seem worthy of being #100.

I don't know that I have that in me today.  Nothing I'm feeling or thinking seems particularly profound.  But I am looking at the things I've said over the past six months, and I'm grateful.  I'm grateful for a place that I can write out my thoughts and my hurts and my hopes.  I'm grateful for the friends who have come alongside to walk this journey with me. I'm grateful for the readers who aren't here to walk alongside me, too.  You push me to stay true to myself, regardless of who is watching and what you may say.  I'm grateful for the relationships I have found.  I'm grateful for the wisdom that you share.  I'm grateful for your encouragement and your love. I'm grateful for time and for healing.  I'm grateful for the music.  I'm grateful that we do not stay stagnant but always have the opportunity to grow and change and become better people. I'm grateful for the changes in relationships, though I do not always understand them. I'm grateful for the art of moving on, for the rediscovery of things I loved but forgot I did.  I'm grateful for new experiences.  I'm grateful for trust.  And I'm grateful for the chance to write #101 tomorrow.

Thank you for being here.  Thank you for caring.  Thank you for your wisdom and your encouragement.  It is because of you that #100 finds me in a healthier place than #1 did... and I hope I can say the same about #200.

Who are you?

Finding ourselves...  it seems to be the popular thing for women in their 30s and 40s to do, doesn't it?  Men buy sportscars and date women they could have conceived.  We "find ourselves."  We all go on these quests to figure out who we are.  And before you think I'm criticizing this, I'm not.  Mere observation, here.

I think about how we identify ourselves.  You ask a man who they are, and in general, they will define themselves by their job.  You ask a woman, and they will define themselves by their relationships.  "I'm Joel's wife.  I'm Cathy's daughter.  I'm Casey,McKenzie, and Alicia's mom.  I'm Lisa's friend." Etc, etc.  I don't know that there is anything wrong in this either.  I just think that we go so long defining ourselves by the people in our lives and what we do for them that we lose a sense of who we would be without them.

I don't think the journey of figuring out who we are is a bad one.  But, it is a journey, isn't it?  For a long time, I've defined myself by what I am not enough of.  Not smart enough. Not pretty enough. Not sympathetic enough. Not kind enough.  Not strong enough. Not talented enough. Not compassionate enough.  Not positive enough. Not realistic enough.  Not ungullible enough.

I don't necessarily think that taking an honest inventory of your faults is a terribly awful thing.  I don't suppose you'd want to wallow there forever, but knowing the areas that you could do some work on can be beneficial.  But it seems to be a terrible way to define yourself too, doesn't it?  Not by what you are, but what you are not.

So you move on, and you start to take an honest inventory of who you actually ARE.  I find this hard to talk about, maybe not so hard to DO, but hard to talk about here.  Talking about your strengths, admitting that you're proud to be ________...  There's a public perception that this comes with a lack of humility.  And who wants to be known as that?

I don't know... just thinking...

Wednesday could have been better.

Wednesday was a day!!

It really started pretty well.  I was in a good mood, things were going fantastic. I checked off one more task to getting one step closer to closing a chapter in need of closing.  We were on track for a very good day.

Casey called at lunchtime, absolutely in tears.  There was some sort of friend drama at recess, and she was not in a good place, let's say.  I drove up to school and let her cry herself out on my shoulder.  We talked things out, got her pulled back together, and sent her back to class.

After school, we had a track meet.  It started alright with both kids (Casey and Alicia) doing well in their respective ballkick events.  And then the running events started...

I was down at the finish line when Alicia's race started, so I wasn't where all the action was.  But, halfway down the track, she fell down, and limped off the track in tears.  I rushed over to where she was and took over from the coach.  She'd fallen pretty hard and was in some pain, but after calming down, I asked her if she was okay.  Mostly, I was worried about if she was embarrassed that she had fallen.  "I'm not crying because I'm embarrassed.  I'm just disappointed that I couldn't finish."  Life lessons from my daughter.  I thought about that more in the day that followed, and I liked her attitude.  It's not so important whether you win or lose the race.  But it matters that you finish.

Following the race, three girls, at different times, came up to us and said that they saw another girl push Alicia down... which made the whole thing even sadder.  I wasn't mad at the kid... they're kids and they're all learning.  It was just sad that it happened.  But it started me being all emotional for my kid...  Thank goodness for sunglasses.

Next came Casey's race.  And really, what was with this day??

Casey was running the 75m dash...  Again, I was near the finish line, waiting for her when the race began.  Partway down, her shoe somehow came off, and she fell down too!  What the heck?  Gravity and my offspring are not friends!  But I was very proud of her.  Casey is VERY self-conscious.  She came in last during her race the week before and she was so upset.  Not because she was last, but because she was sure that people were watching her and talking about her.  It's been a series of life lessons for her to learn that fewer people are thinking about her than she thinks there are... and also... that the people who are?  Don't matter.  (Her momma is learning the same lesson, I think.)

In any case, I knew that she was going to be embarrassed that she had fallen and that, because of that, she was going to come in last.  But, she was a trooper... even knowing that she would be last, she got up, slipped her shoe back on, and ran the rest of the way to the finish line.  REALLY proud of her for finishing.

So my mom instincts were on hyperdrive.  But as I rushed to the finish line to "fix it," I noticed a dad on the other side of the track.  He was the father of another child at the meet.  From another school.  No investment in my kid at all...  but he was there, yelling out encouragement to her to keep going, that it was okay, that she was doing great.  This meant a really lot lot lot to this mom.

I actually knew him, though I don't know that he knows me or my child.  He's the pastor at our church, which is pretty large.  While he might recognize me as a member of his church, I'm pretty sure he didn't know the child he was cheering on was one of his flock.

I was pretty much an emotional wreck after this.  I'm not sure why... I think it was just the day's events all piled up on top of each other.  Maybe a healthy dose of hormones making it all worse.

When I came home, I wrote an email to my pastor, and basically cried all over his inbox, thanking him for what he'd done for my kid, for me.  I don't know if Casey noticed it, but I did.  I felt sorta bad afterwards for crying all over his inbox... until I got his reply.

p.s. my daughter alex just came in and said, Dad...are you crying? I told her yes, and I read her your email...just wanted you to know how incredible you are for sending this encouragement to me, and how incredible Jesus is...

I guess sometimes your bad day can turn out for good.

Snow Leopards, Sisterly Brutality, and Integrity

While reading a sign on animal endangerment outside the snow leopard exhibit at the zoo...  (quotes are about as close as I can remember them)

McKenzie: Mom... what does that mean? "Lack of enforcement?"

Me: Well... it means that they have laws about killing snow leopards, but it's not important enough to the police to bother punishing people if they DO kill the snow leopards.  And if the police aren't punishing people when they break the law, for a lot of people, that's enough for them to just go ahead and keep breaking it.

McK: But... if it's against the law, shouldn't they just not do it because it's wrong?

Me:  Of course...  it's not a good thing, but people are like that sometimes.  It's like if I told you that if you hit Casey, I was going to ground you for a month.  And then you hit Casey... and I didn't do anything about it.  And then I said to you again "Mckenzie, if you hit Casey, I'm going to ground you for a month."  Then, you hit her again... and again, I didn't punish you at all.  What would you learn about that?  What would probably happen if you hit Casey a third time?

McK: You probably wouldn't do anything.

Me:  Right...  and if you knew that if you hit Casey, NOTHING would happen to you...  how much reason would you have to not hit her?

McK: I guess not a lot...  but hitting is still wrong.

Me:  You're right... it's still wrong.  Just like killing snow leopards is still wrong.  But for some people, if they don't have that threat of being punished for bad things, then they'll just keep on doing bad things.  Or even if they know they aren't going to get credit for doing good things, then they won't do good things if no one is going to notice them doing those good things.  Do you know what "integrity" means?

McK:  I'm not sure.

Me:  It kind of means doing things that are right... even if people don't know you did them.  And that's what I hope you girls will be like when you grow up.  That you will do things that are right... even if you don't get praised for it, and even if you know you won't get punished if you decide to do something wrong.  That you'll always try to do the right thing... even if the only person who knows you did it is you.

Full disclosure... I possibly didn't actually say that last part, but I thought of it an hour later and wished I had!  All my best parenting moments occur "an hour later"... and in my imagination.

Happy Monday!

You are owed a bit of an apology for the bait and switch which is about to ensue.  Yesterday's activities included a lot of driving which usually equals "Thinking Time."  This is sometimes good, sometimes bad.  The first half of the day's driving ended with me defiantly proclaiming to myself (and then you), "Yes.  I'm going to say all those things I've been stopping myself from saying outloud because I can! Everyone else says what they think!  I can too, and damn the repercussions!  Who cares, anyway???"  And I had every intention of doing so.

And then...  a lot more driving, combined with a timely fortune cookie and my own personal Jiminy Cricket in my inbox, finally got me to the place where I said "No, girlie.  Everyone else may do something, and that might be true and they might even get away with it.  But you are not everyone else and you know that what you had to say would hurt some, anger others, and break a promise to one.  And while it could be true that doing what you wanted would unburden your soul in some ways, it would break it in others.  Be better."

So, I am here telling you that I am not going to say all those things that I've stopped myself from saying.  I'm going to keep stopping myself because it's right.  So those diatribes on unresolved suspense, drama queens, definition of fandom, frustrations over my own inability to control my emotions among circumstances, and a host of other things (I had a list!) will have to wait until the month of Never.  Sorry for getting your drama hopes up!!

Instead....

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McKenzie and I spent a delightful weekend away!  This was her birthday party, really.  Instead of a party with kids from school this year, she decided that she'd rather have a weekend away with Mom.  (Yay for me!  See!  I AM cool!)  She doesn't ask for much typically, and so I really wanted this trip to be delightful for her.  I wanted to do every little thing that she wanted to do that we could fit into the time allotted.  So I made up a list of my own ideas of things I thought she might like and told her to pick some she'd like to, and to feel free to add in her own.

So with a tentative plan in my head, we set off on Saturday after we finished putting up the trampoline.  The first stop was the zoo.  Oh how I love the zoo!!!  We picked a lovely day for it, too...  the sun was shining, it was mostly warm out.  I think we'd all forgotten what it was like to walk around outside and not need a raincoat.  I gave Mckenzie the map and told her we'd go to whatever animals she'd like!  Normally, the zoo protocol is I try to visit everyone's favorite animals equally, so it's never unfair.  But on Saturday, with no sisters to appease, it was McKenzie Day.  She's been really into dinosaurs lately, and we lucked out that they have a Dinosaur exhibit open right now.  She was delighted!  We talked about the book she's writing now, and the ones she has planned.  School... Friends...

My plan had been to then take her shopping at the mall, which wasn't far from the zoo.  But she was a bit tuckered out after we'd visited the zoo, so we checked into our hotel next.  I'd decided to do Embassy Suites... And it was a great choice for what we wanted and pretty affordable.  After putting everything in our room, we went down to the Manager's Reception for a little snack...  veggies, crackers, chips and salsa.  Just enough for snacks...  but she was delighted to discover that they had a stack of board games you could play.

And this is where I ran into my first lesson of the weekend.  See, I had plans for how the weekend was going to go...  She wanted to go shopping, so I wanted to fit that in.  She wanted to go to the zoo, so I wanted to fit that in.  But...  the real point of the weekend?  Just that she felt loved and taken care of and supported and special.  THAT was the point.  So when she was perfectly happy sitting at a table in the lobby of the hotel, snacking on carrots, and learning to play Scrabble?  I had to remember that THIS was the point... not squeezing in as many activities as possible.  And that sometimes just sitting and being with someone you love is all the special you need.

Apparently, the hotel lobby was rife for little things like this for me to notice, as the 2nd one came not much later.  Two floors up, a group of teenage girls ran by in their bathing suits, on the way to the pool.  I heard a woman at the table behind us make some disparaging remarks about them... the girls weren't what we would describe as petite.  I turned and glanced at them quickly, and was momentarily surprised (though perhaps I shouldn't have been) to note that the women muttering about how awful those girls were in their unmodelness were themselves in dire need of a little Jenny Craig.

I was taken back to an incident that happened with CT a couple years ago.  In the chat room, we had an anonymous user for awhile who thought it was great fun to come in, create trouble, and mostly completely disparage the volunteer moderators who were trying to maintain some order in a place with lots of guidelines but little support.  When disparaging the work of those people didn't result in the reaction she was looking for, this person turned to attacks on physical appearance.  I was a moderator, and an easy target.  Did that hurt?  Oh of course it did.  But, I think what hurt even more was seeing the reactions of people, outside the forum, who were "watching" it all go on.  Delighted.  Absolutely delighted to see the comments being made.  Delighted to see the hurt being doled out.  And from people who I am positive know very intimately the pain of having their physical appearance criticized and mocked.  We all lack so much compassion.

Sometimes I wonder what it is that makes us so critical of qualities in others... when they are things that are our biggest struggles.  I'm not being attacking of others in that... I find myself doing this, too.  I find myself to be least forgiving of the qualities in others that I struggle with the most in myself.  Why is it so hard to find compassion for others over things that we can't conquer either?  I have no answer for that... just wondering.  And a resolve to do better.

Well, that's probably enough for one day... housework is calling and I have much to do before I leave for linedancing... More tomorrow!  I hope you all have a great day!

As previously scheduled...

(Preliminary note...  to anyone trolling by to see my reaction to the latest upheaval in the land of Celtic Thunder, you won't find it.  I made a promise to him.  I'll be keeping it, even if he never knows I have. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
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Go on and re-read this first.

Last time I re-did my music, I was ready to start dancing a little.  But, just a little.  A little bit more dancey tunes made their way onto my go-to playlist.  But, too, I kept a good many of those healing songs that help me out when I've had a day when I just don't want to do it anymore.  But I was finding myself skip them more and more when they popped up on my player.  You know what that means, my friends?

Healing.  Just healing.

Yesterday, the weather was atrocious.  Rain, rain, rain.  Two of my kids had a track meet, and they apparently only cancel for lightning.  So we all spent two hours, standing out on a muddy field in the pouring rain.  It was gray, gray, gray and dull.  We returned home in our new identities as drowned rats.

This morning?  This morning, the weather is gorgeous.  Blue skies.  Puffy white clouds.  As I walked back into the house after taking a load of cardboard out to the recycle bin, I couldn't help but smile up at the sky, arms outstretched to the heavens.  Just so happy to be alive in it all.

And that's how I feel as I walk closer and closer to getting better.  Like I want to raise my hands up to the heavens and twirl around with renewed delight in my world.

To celebrate, I cleaned off my playlist last night and started fresh.  Nothing mopey.  Just music I love and delight in.  Even spent about $30 downloading music I've heard recently on the radio that I wanted to get... or songs that I realized I didn't have but wanted.

So today, as I do my housework and play the music in the background, I will dance and smile and be happy that there is healing for what scratches at our souls, if we really want it.

Fall Down

Sometimes falling is the best thing you can do.

That goes against everything I've ever felt, really.  As I grew up, I took on this inbred belief that I couldn't fall.  Not that I wasn't ABLE to fall, but that I couldn't fall.  Falling meant failure. And failure meant I wasn't good enough.  I wasn't smart enough.  My independence was idiotically intense about this.  I could do it.  I could do it by myself. And I could do it with flying colors, or it wasn't worth anything.

I never really understood then that falling and failure are important.  I never comprehended that failure was only failure if I refused to learn from it, or that failure was an important component of ultimate success.

We have to fall down.  None of us are perfect... and if we get to thinking that we are? That's the time that we need to fall down the most.  Sometimes, it's in this time of ego and confidence that we forget that we are NOT perfect and we cannot do it by ourselves.  We start to believe that we can do all things because we are freaking awesome.  And we forget, oh do we forget, that we are not everything we think we are.

It's here that we need to fall down.  We need to crash and burn.  We need the world and everything we think about ourselves to come crashing down around us.  It is here, in the ashes and the rubble, that we can look around and see things as they are.  If we are wise, if we haven't run off everyone who loved us, and if we can find the strength, we can stand up out of the rubble, surrounded by those who care.  We can learn from the fall, see what brought us to the edge.  And start again...  this time, a little wiser.

Clean Up!

When it comes to organizing projects, Joel and I go about the tasks with completely opposite approaches.  If Joel walked into a garage with a workbench completely disorganized, with tools strewn everywhere....  he would go buy one of those cork board things, install it on the wall, and organize AS he put things away in their proper places.  This makes sense, surely.

But I can't.  I seem to be physically incapable of organizing if the space isn't clean first.  I would have to clean off the workbench first.  Shove things in drawers.  Put them in a box.  Take a bottle of Pledge to the wood of the counter.. and only THEN could I go about the task of organizing the space.  It's probably more work my way.  But for some reason, I can't organize in a space that... needs organizing.  I know, that doesn't really make any sense.  It certainly isn't terribly efficient.  And, yet that's me.

I'm there now... It's a time of mental and physical spring cleaning.  There is much of me that is ready to clean up, box up, and move on.  But there is all this stuff that needs going through, deciding what needs to be thrown away, what needs keeping, what needs incineration or an appointment with the sledge hammer.  What SHOULD be merely a mental exercise has bled over into the physical and has become a much bigger job than it was supposed to be...

This, too, is very much like me.  I make the simplest jobs into the largest tasks.  So many times as a kid, I would be given the task of 'clean your room.'  This shouldn't have been that difficult.  Make my bed, pick up my toys, put the laundry in the hamper, put my books away, sweep.  And I'm done.  But no, no...  I'd always get stuck on that "put my books away" chore.  I'd pick up one book and begin to put it on the shelf... and then realize how very disorganized my books were!  Oh no, my darlings, we couldn't have that!  So I would reorganize the entire bookshelf...  This would require me to empty the entire thing, decide how I was going to organize this time (Author?  Date? Color? Book height?  Page numbers? Genre? Title? Publication date?... oh the possibilities are endless), and spend the next two hours separating and filing.  To be fair, I completely enjoyed doing this task...  but it certainly made "clean my room" take MUCH longer than it ever should have.

And in the same way, I'm finding myself cleaning up... But it's simply becoming a much bigger task than I had intended, mostly because I keep allowing myself to be distracted by related things that also could use doing.  In the long run, this is not a bad thing.  My pictures DO need organizing. My desk DOES need cleaning out.  My kitchen DOES need an overhaul. My car CD collection DOES need to be updated.  And when I finally finish doing what I need to do to move forward, my life in general will be so much more organized, and that will be good!  :)

There are things I would like to do... but things I can't do.  People I'd like to talk to and hug and express sorrow to... but I think I can't.  Or shouldn't.  Shouldn't is probably the better word.  and to you, though you will never see this, know that I'm thinking of you...  and while we aren't friends, know that I care and that I wish things were different.  And hope that someday, they will be.

Things I remember.... about my mom.

• Picnics Mom made us take in February. In the snow.
• Only surpassed by the picnics she made us take... during hunting season.  Not sure why she made us wear antlers.
• Lying in bed on Christmas Eve on one of the first Christmases after my dad moved out... and listening to her curse for hours, trying (rather unsuccessfully) to put the Minnie's Kitchen together for Amanda
• The sweater from Target my mom bought me and that I subsequently refused to wear ever, for the unfortunate timing of overhearing the upper classmen (who had their locker next to mine) vehemently declare that only losers shop at Target.
• Mom telling us "Then go live at Grandma's" when we tried to get her to warm up our syrup by pointing out that GRANDMA did it.
• The butterfly Mom painted on the bedroom wall
• Being driven around campus in the spring when all the college guys at the frat houses were outside throwing the football around.  "Boy shopping."
• Not arguing when I insisted that I wanted to read at the middle school because "it was cooler over there" when the real reason was because I knew Joel would be with his friends shooting baskets
• The sacrifices she made to take care of us
• Having to explain why we were out of the house, screaming down the street, when my mom pulled up... when we were supposed to be inside.  (We'd been prank calling (not supposed to be on the phone either!) and the lady told us she was calling the cops on us.)
• All the debate tournaments which required her to get up at 4am to take me to school to meet the bus
• All the dresses she made me when I was a kid... I'm pretty sure I had copies of every Little House and Annie dress possible to have.
• Camping trips at Cottage Grove Lake
• The year we took that vacation to Disneyland and broke down in Los Banos for three days.  The town is aptly named.
• That she'd feel guilty for grounding us and take us shopping.
• That she always encouraged me to do my best.
• And rarely said "I told you so"
• Even when I deserved it.
• The year I realized the back massager wasn't really a back massager.
• That she drove to every fabric store in the Western Hemisphere until I was happy with the EXACT SHADE OF BLUE for my bridesmaids' dresses.
• That she can't make cookies with unblack bottoms.
• That the kitchen timer used to be the smoke alarm and we were all trained at any early age to stand on a dining room chair in the middle of the hallway and wave a towel at it.

Happy Mother's Day, Momma.  I love you!!

An Entry of No Conclusions

Nothing is tied up with a pretty bow today...  just thoughts...


When I came downstairs this morning, my children were watching the news, specifically video of people celebrating outside the White House last night, and McKenzie asked me, "Mom.. is it okay to be happy that a person is dead?"  and I don't really know how to answer that.  The nuances of past history seem sometimes hard to explain to a 4th grader... But, sometimes, I think when you have trouble communicating the nuances, it's because the nuances are more justification than they are reasons.


One of my favorite writers said last night that he would think of 9/11 with sorrow... and also cold satisfaction.  And I understood this as well.


My favorite vlogger wrote "Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust."  This, too, I understood.


My thoughts today are very cloudy.  Sometimes, after you get done trying to describe the nuances to your child, it's okay to sigh a deep breath and say sadly, "Baby... I don't know."

The Keep Shelf

My mom is a repeat reader.  She has had the same books on her shelf for years, and she reads them over and over.  That's just the sort of reader that she is, and that's great.  But it would make me crazy.  I rarely repeat-read.  It has to be really special to me to get to "The Keep Shelf."  I mean, I've already read it... I know what happens... So you have to have created something that touches me in a unique way for me to want to read your book again.

But there are a few that make it there and I DO re-read them from time to time...

• Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I have loved this book/series forever.  I first read it when I was in middle school and I have re-read many times since then.  It just makes me LAUGH.  Every time.  I remember times that Joel and I have been on roadtrips and I've been reading it.  I'd suddenly bust out laughing at something and he'd want to know what was so funny.  But it was hard to explain when the "something" that made it so funny was written 20 pages earlier.
• Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series.  This is a fantasy series which I've loved... but funnily enough, I've never finished it.  The books are gigantic, huge sweeping story arcs, nicely written.  But I got about halfway through Book 7 (after reading roughly 10,000 pages of the series) and got burnt out...  I desperately want to go back and finish the series, only it's been so long that I really think I'm going to have to start over at Book 1 so I remember what everything is!
• Yann Martel's Life of Pi. I read this one for a bookclub several years ago, and there was just something about that I REALLY loved.  It was interesting and suspenseful and made me really not want to spend much time with any hungry tigers in the foreseeable future.
• LM Montgomery's Anne/Emily books.  I love both of these series, and I think that, based on popularity, I'm suppose to love Anne more.  But I've always had a very tender spot in my heart for Emily.  She's a more somber, sad character than Anne could ever be, but there's a certain tenderness and vulnerability in her that has always called to me.
• Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear series. I find this one to be HUGELY intriguing to read.  The research that goes into these books is extensive.  Save for the fact that, after the first book, the characters are having sex every other minute, they're really good.  I don't really have much against characters getting it on, but for goodness sake... prostitutes get less action than Ayla does.  But if you've ever had the slightest interest in the life of the caveman (cause really, who DOESN'T stay up all night wondering about that??), I definitely recommend it!
• Narnia and LOTR--  I'm starting to get bored here, so I'm just going to let this one be self-explanatory.  Beautiful stories, characters I love, sweeping epics.  Nothing to not like here.  I might marry Pippin when I grow up.
• Oh, the Dark Tower!  I have bought more copies of this series than any other ever because I keep giving them away to people.  "Please love the books I love!!!"  You should love this series.  If you do not love this series, you should have your license to read taken away from you.