do your research before converting...

i'm pretty sure my cat has peed on every moving box still left unpacked. we don't have carpet, so it's not in it...but i cannot escape this smell. no amount of vanilla amber candles will block it. it's true incentive for finishing the unpack, i guess. repugnant.
i'm surrounded by males. all my kids, save my stepdaughter, who lives on her own, are male. all my pets are male. i cannot escape the male-ness. it has it's place but today it's culminating in pee where it shouldn't be...down the sides of the toilet, on the wall behind the toilet, seeping out of diapers, and of course, on moving boxes. i've really had enough of all that today.

as i said earlier, and really mean...since i decided to try on perfectionism for size, my life has been much harder. i see stuff that needs doing and feel i must do it. and most of it can wait, like it has for most of my life. there are times when this foreign, perfect aiming behavior could have served me well...architecture school, for example. those kids are intense. i passed and i passed with good grades, etc...didn't pull a single all nighter, never had that harried feeling of not quite right yet. it was always fine, or good enough. but now...i know my kitchen floor is funky and needs to be mopped. usually i could say to myself "it's the weekend, i'll do it monday" and i'm desperately trying to say that now...because i have a whole pile of shoes and belts and hats to put away...since dumping a despoiled box out to get it out of the house....and really, my heart and butt wants to stay right here...but it's nagging me. i've a strong suspicion that if i finish this glass of wine, i'll win the battle. but i'll see that floor in the morning and flip out, internally for sure, externally, quite possibly. i want it to be shiny and clean and perfect. sundays do that to me.

reminders like a frying pan to the head...

i know someone with a pretty sick child. she celebrates the little things. first, when i read about her current victory, i cried. i couldn't help it. i hope i never know how these mothers get by day to day with the worry, the fear, the agony of wanting, needing to take the pain from your child and take it on yourself instead, if God would only let you. they do get by though. they do it for their babies, because this is what helps them to heal. but i hope i never have to summon the kind of strength that must take. so i cried. then i went upstairs and buried my nose in the hair of my sleeping children and kissed them, said a silent prayer, told them i loved them. and now, i cry again because i yelled loud and repeatedly today. i used the scary mom voice and made my littlest cry. why do we do this? why, in the moment, do we think they are trying to maliciously torment us? they aren't, they are being stinkers, because that is what 2 and 4 year old boys do. and my goal of being a kind, consistant, nurturing mother, well, that counter clicked back to zero to start again. it's all we can do. pray for a better day tomorrow and do our best to make it happen. but i'm reminded, that there are no guarantees. God gives much but also can take away. and my children will know love. they will know humor. they will know that mama isn't perfect but she loves them with an ache that only a mother can feel. they will know.

about face, left face....

let's change directions for a bit. i've grown weary, for a time, of my thinly veiled, grey observations about daily life at the moment. food. it's how i express love. the process, each cut of the knife thru vegetables, carefully selected. the blend of herbs and spices, just right...the way the cream and butter and garlic and wine swirl together forming a culinary heaven. the crackle of a chewy bread, with a bubbly crust that makes a huge, delicious mess when sliced. the way love and food come together to form comfort, or refreshment or just what you needed at that moment. now...the rub....the people i cook for--a preschooler, a toddler and a man who, bless his heart, has seared his tastebuds and sense of smell with paint fumes (to clarify, he's not a freaky inhaler, he spent years in the automotive paint industry). my love falls on empty mouths. joe tries to appreciate. he really does, but my carefully thought out, blend of herbs, dashes of spices...go unnoticed, or pronounced flavorless. i should say, they aren't flavorless...but you see what happens. if i don't catch myself, and remind myself of my tough crowd, i get hurt. i'm so connected to nurturing, that to feel like i've fallen short is difficult for me. i recently decided that i'm going to cook, my intentions are clear, and if my efforts go unheralded with sighs of delight, it's okay. i'll do the sighing.

...i'm not sure, well, maybe i should?

okay, so i'm not actually sure i should be writing anything tonight. it was a long day. filled with a lot of tasks that had to be done, and many did not but i got to spend time on hold anyway. i've got a dog at my feet, a cat on the table next to me, and three sleeping people in the house, and i need to be also. but i wanted to find time to say that girlfriends are invaluable. Girlfriends who help you wade thru your life, who remind you to look for God everywhere, who remind you to celebrate tiny victories because sometimes that's all we get for awhile. my small victory tonight is taking the upper hand in an internal debate. this debate will happen again. but for tonight, i win.

life is so not what i thought it'd be which is pretty wonderful in some ways if you can see past how disappointing it can also be sometimes. these little dramas of the day today--they are my movie, my theme song....i don't need to find drama, or find a way to attract it..it's in the toddler meltdowns that end in tiny arms locked around my neck, in sloppy kisses and in cold dog noses on my cheek in the middle of the night. it's in the terrible beauty of those rocky spots in a marriage--that you pray you get thru. it's in all the things that make you, you..when you wake up and realize you're who you are. and have always been, even when you spent so long pretending you weren't. this drama, the beauty, the pain. it's all worth it and it's all here for us to savor. this door, this life is short and ends fast. i think i'll just live in my own soundtrack of rocket noises, matchbox cars down wood stairs, of mommy calls in the middle of the night, the symphony of opening doors and fruit snack wrappers, of barking dogs and snoring husbands, of the dragon tails theme song. all of it. it's all mine.

home in a place that's not...

i had to move recently. i did not want to, and i'll spare the sordid details. i've always been known (more, like a family/friend joke) for my wandering nature. I've lived in 23 different houses in 16 years. the house i just moved from was the first place i'd lived that i didn't want to move from. i'd been there a year. it wasn't so much the house, it was the town. my hometown--the one i swore i'd never live in because i was much too cool, metropolitan, blah, blah, blah. i'm not. i wanted the comfort of home. i loved taking my kids for a walk and always running into someone i knew and liked. i liked walking to the coffee shop to talk to dave, or jenna or one of the sweet people who worked there. i liked the surreal mix of bmw's and monster trucks in the parking lot of the local grocery store. i liked finding a church that didn't scare me, that helped me find God. so i had to move back to a town, about an hour away, that i had some bad experiences in...but into a fixer upper house i actually like. i've been trying to convince myself that home is where my family is (true) and it's just geography (also true)..but there is something to be said for connecting to a place and it's people. i saw things in this new place that touched me--the dapper old gentleman pushing his classic bicycle, the line of Harley's that's always parked in front of, or just pulling away from the rough bar on Main Street, rosey cheeked kids in sports uniforms, or a mom pushing a stroller. I see these things, and it makes me smile. this is someone's hometown, just not mine.

...and today, me, tomorrow, we love

sometimes it's really hard to be me. in fact, it's often better not to be me, in fact, since it goes against the me i'd like to be. there is something to be said for improving oneself, or denying oneself to better serve others. God says it's a must. But often, my inner dialogue says "Good God, must I?" I'm a bit rambly today...a series of inner explosions, expressing itself in strange behavior, coupled with a cold and some contankerous boys in my house today, has left me feeling somewhat out of sorts. someone told me recently that the only person i needed to satisfy was myself and my heart. sounds good at first....but really, how very selfish and how shallow an existance this would be for the long term....and it shows in his life, sadly. true satisfaction actually comes from taking care of others, showing love, giving love, handing it along. it grows and grows and has deep roots. but the "Good God, must I?" bubbbles up from time to time when I Want, I Need, Me, me, me gets left behind. it's terribly hard to be selfless and let those me, me's just dissolve.

revisiting..

yeah, i forgot about my blog after one post. i'm remembering that whole "juggling kids and life and nonsense from my first and only post...and i'm supposing that is what has happened. so much life in less than a year. i suppose this is one of those God tests....i get them a lot, but this is the biggie..between love snags, kid snags, weight snags, financial eff ups.....this year has made me grow a lot. being forced back into a place where i need to rely on my husband, myself and God more than i ever have, well, it's humbling.

so, i've decided to cook more. not just cook, but cook to nurture. and since both my children and my husband are immune to my gastrointestinal charms, it is for me alone. but i sure hope you come to dinner.