Bad mom

I had a bad mom moment today. No. I am not going to tell you what it was. It is none of your business and completely irrelevant to the story as a whole. The point is it was bad. It was bad for me. My son was fine. Which kind of leaves you to wonder just a bit about bad mom moments. Here my child is clean, well fed, loved... and here I am crying in the arms of my own mother because I am having a "bad mom" moment. Go figure.

And for your viewing pleasure the cutest little tea-drinker ever:

Internet Gypsy

I was given my guitar. I wasn't given just any guitar either. It's a Taylor. If you don't know what that is then you are obviously not a guitar player and I am not looking down my nose at you but I am thinking about what you are missing out on. This is a beautiful instrument. It also came to me used which I also enjoy because you don't have to worry about being the one to make the first scratch... kind of takes the anal-ness out of it. And what, you may ask, does this have to do with being an internet gypsy? Don't get your undies in a bundle, I am getting to that part. The name of the guitar was Princess I say was because when I got her I just didn't fit us. I mean I know it could have been cute the whole Princess Jasmine thing and all that but for whatever her and I were going to become Princess just didn't fit us. So I changed her name. Gypsy. It fits. It fits us. I am an internet gypsy. Maybe it is all the years spent traveling. Maybe it's just the fact that I feel a fresh wind blowing (every watched the movie Chocolate? You should. You'd get the wind reference then.) and I just have to change.

I am changing my blog space again because I wanted to be close to everyone else. Every other blog seems to be on blogspot and I can't follow anybody! Plus I have to admit I would like to make it easier for peeps to follow we as well, who likes to have an empty "follower" space.

Feel free to welcome me back and I will try not to stray far again.

I am here to cauterize

It seems that when the cool blade of life and criticism slices in to the nape of your neck there are two amazing things that happen. #1. You do not experience the huge amounts of pain that you expected. It’s much worse. #2. It severs whatever was left of the “I care what other people think” cord that was dangling by a thread anyway. Now here is an interesting thing the “I care what other people think” cord always grows back. Sometimes in pieces, sometimes stronger because it has been chopped once and has grown back with scar tissue. I have decided on a course of action to keep it from growing back. I am going to cauterize it. Painful? Yes. I have a plan of action. We have camp here at the community base for the next couple of days. I am going to make sure that by the end of camp I have seared those puppies dead.

You may think that it is important to care what other people think. I mean it would be terrible to have a bunch of people running around with no feelings about others I have no desire to become a psychopath. I have lived with the early stages of psychopathy in my home before and there is nothing that would make me wish that on someone else. BUT this cord I am talking about is not the same thing. This cord is the one that lets other peoples choices, thoughts and criticisms dictate what you say and how you feel. It is the cord that lets other people damage me. It is the cord that dictates what I am worth. This week(end) I cauterize.

The interesting thing about cauterizing is that is only a step in several and it isn’t the first. The first is the pain and understanding that things just are not going to change unless you do something differently. The second is that you must face your own personal guillotine. Failure. That’s right, failure. And then there is the choice. Leave it be? Let is grow back? Hope that it doesn’t? Rave about it? Let everyone know how you have been set free only to be back again a month, two, a year later?

Pass the red hot poker.

The Guillotine

I can feel writing boredom hanging over my head like a guillotine waiting to drop and cut short my blogging experience. Why? Because I have run up against what normally happens when I take on a writing project like this. I want to dive in too deep. I want to talk about things that are so gritty and sometimes emotional and… well frankly it isn’t that I am afraid of criticism. I actually don’t really have many “real” friends to lose. It is just the fact that sometimes what I want to talk about involves such personal detail that I don’t know if I want just Joe or Jill Whatserface reading about it and then there are the times when I am concerned that someone might read something I have written who is actually close to me and be hurt. It is so hard to convey the actual passion or original thought behind the black and white. I guess that is what a good writer is supposed to be able to do.

The rope is slowly coming apart that is holding the guillotine blade at bay my head is suspended beneath it and yet just like a dear in the headlights I can’t seem to move.

A better version of me?

There seems to be a trend in moms especially “crunchy” or hippy-ish moms, of which I count myself a proud card carrying member. It is not only in these mothers but seems to be in the lives of any woman who has a “cause” and that includes children and all our extras. The trend is that all of us cause mamas tend to be just thought, totally focused on who we are and what we are doing and forgetting all about what we look like while we are doing it. I have learned something from “What Not to Wear” and that is the fact that many women who have causes think that the only way to seem fully absorbed in their cause is to look like they don’t care about anything else. They are too focused on feeding their family right or on their art, music, writing, children… and many many other things.

Not long ago I would have counted myself among that number. Thinking that my personality was the only thing that I needed and if people didn’t appreciate that then they were probably just shallow. Thinking that clothes, makeup and all the rest wasn’t really worth anything because I was too busy doing something worthwhile.

I have had a slow transformation over the past couple years of my life. A lot of the credit I have to say has to go to my Superman. I have come to a place where looks, my clothes and fixing myself up a bit has become a small but important part of my life. People do see you differently when you make an effort. Like it or not it is the exterior that people see first even though some of us would argue the point you can’t actually wear your personality. I am finding that exerting that little extra effort helps me to reap greatly. My Superman appreciates the effort, actually all of the important people in my life, superman, mini man and my community are able to see through my effort every day,besides those occasional pj days that we all have. But that is the problem, many times occasional is used in the reverse and we end up putting forth no effort for those who we care about the most.

I was completely amazed about how I saw myself in a different light when I started putting myself together on a regular basis. I feel more confident. I feel like I am going to accomplish things not just today but from here on out.

The Million Dollar Middle Ground

I am not really big on happy mediums. I am very much an either/or black or white yes or no type of person or at least I was. Something about getting older, getting married and having a child has changed me when it comes to hard lines. I guess you could say that I have “softened”, actually quite literally.

I have found parenting to be frustrating not because of parenting my child I actually am more what I would call an “instinctual” parent I go with my gut a lot and it really does work for us. I attribute a lot of that to being raised in a healthy well-balanced family. What I find frustrating about parenting is other parents. Not other parents exactly but all the different parenting styles that have labels and the fact that there seems to be a very black and white style face-off going on. I belong to several groups and they are very close to black and white opposites one is on the “attachment parenting” side of things and then there is the “babywise” style. Now if I need to label myself I would land on the attachment parenting side because I have seen first hand the damage done in the lives of children who were not firmly attached to anyone. I would also call myself an attachment parent because I firmly believe in co-sleeping, breastfeeding and responding to your infant. I do not think it is ok to leave your infant to scream, ever. I am bolding the word infant because I think it is very important to make a distinction between the way we parent infants and the way we parent as our children grow. One of my favorite analogies for raising a child is an inverted triangle, when a child is small the have very little room, they are kept close and tight to you and they are not allowed as much leeway if you will but as a child ages there is more and more freedom and they are able to make more and more choices on their own. I would not say that I have any “babywise” tendencies at all I just can’t put together the babywise philosophy with the way I feel like my child and the way I feel as a parent.

On the other hand… I am finding that there has to be some other thing that doesn’t have a name yet. I don’t know what it is. Whatever it is that is what I am. Why do I think that? Because researchers have discovered that there are two ways that a child can have attachment problems the first way is through their needs not being met and the second through everything being over-met, basically a child is smothered and spoiled until they develop problems.
I know this may seem shocking but I really do not believe that discussing things with a toddler works. I do think that is important to talk to your child even if it is over their heads and to explain things, even explaining the discipline makes sense to me but to watch a parent get down and have a serious talk with a toddler and actually think that it is going to keep them from hitting that other child again is actually quite laughable. Developing respect for other people does not come naturally. We are naturally very selfish creatures. You can see that in toddlers especially, we are not naturally kind and giving, we learn to do mean things without ever being taught how to do them, it is shocking but true. How do I know that it is true? I have watched it with my own child I have been surprised by some of the selfish behavior he exhibits without it ever having been modeled for him. Going back to the triangle analogy I find that confident secure children that grow to be emotionally, mentally and relationally healthy are those that basically “ran up against” their parents when they were toddlers and found them to be immovable. I do not mean unkind in any way but that they find that there is a safe perimeter set up in their lives that they can bend or break but it also can not be bent or broken by anyone or anything else.

So in practicality what I mean is exhibited in the story of my non-sleeping child finally becoming a sleeping child. My son was a terrible sleeper and was up 6+ times a night up until he was 11 months old. There was finally a point where we were both so exhausted that I put up the pack n’ play right by my bed, I was less than a foot away from him. I laid down in bed and placed him in the pack n’ play during one of his out and out fits about going back to sleep for who knows what time that night. He was nursed. He was warm. His mommy and daddy were right there. He proceeded to throw a fit the size of Texas. Then my child slept. And I slept. This did not stop all the waking. There were still waking but they were to come to the big bed with mommy and daddy which we willingly allowed (and still allow) him to do. He still needs us, he needs our comfort and we do not deprive him of that but we also came to a point where his waking was no longer needs based and his crying had turned from needs crying in to fit throwing and that is where he chose to start testing the parental walls.

I don’t think that this is a middle ground because I don’t think it is midway between “attachment parenting” and “babywise” I don’t think there is some mystical perfect middle ground so to speak I think there is just some other way of doing things, maybe if I come up with a good name I’ll write a book and make millions. But until then I’ll just remain broke and keep blogging.

The Mini Van

I was cleaning out my mini van yesterday and thinking about all the harassment I have endured for first purchasing a mini van and secondly, horror of all horrors, actually enjoying it! But as I was lifting the pads of my son’s car seat to make sure I vacuumed all the cracks (dirty car seats just happen to be one of my pet peeves) I was rehashing why so many people hate mini vans. I know there are probably a hundred million different reasons but I really think that it really comes down to the mini vans contents than anything else. I mean sure they don’t have the most stunning bodies and they don’t have the best gas mileage but still a heck of a lot better than many SUVs. I really think it comes down to the fear of what is inside a mini van. Mini vans contain children. Children have food in the car. Food gets spilled in car. Frazzled mom can’t find time to clean the up the food/beverage spilled in the car by the children it contains therefore it sits there. For eons. Mini vans smell. The smell like… I don’t even know. But you know what I mean. It is “the” smell. It’s the “I carry children” smell and not just children but dogs and gear and whatever else but they all seem to smell the same. There is stuff everywhere, paper shoved in cracks, coffee cups, plates, last summer’s sunscreen and most of all, snacks, crushed, mooshed snacks. Not only do mini vans contain all these things but they also contain the main operator, the mom. Now the mini van mom is something to be truly feared. She is the one who proudly slapped the “My child is on the honor roll at….” on the back of her van in honor of her 2-year-old that is on the “honor role” at the local day care along with everyone else so that no one got hurt feelings. There are stickers with soccer/football/baseball, and everything else played with a ball, located somewhere on the back windshield. You know what she does at those games. We don’t even have to ask do we? We hardly even have to waste an imagination. We’ve all seen ‘em. Mini van moms. Everyone knows ‘em, no one wants to be them and yet there are out there, hundreds, thousands of them.

I was thinking of all this while cleaning my van and it made me put a little extra effort in to vacuuming every tiny crevice that I could possibly reach in the whole van. I spent time smelling around to see if there was even a trace of “that” smell. I checked for loose toys, pieces of paper were discarded anything and everything that could possibly turn this vehicle in to that… thing… I really do like my mini van. A lot. I can even take the harassment that goes along with owning one because I know that all you SUV owning parents have the same problem you just aren’t owning up to it yet but one day, don’t worry, that will carry a stigma as well, oh wait… ok, not going there, not tonight.

Dear...

Dear rigorous workout regime I sincerely appreciate how you transformed my post-baby body in to a much fitter mommy body but you would mind terribly much if I requested that you give me my boobs back? I actually enjoyed my pregnant/nursing boobs.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Your truly,

Jasmine

Engaging in Commitment

Don’t worry I am not going to give some sort of word definition lecture. I am pretty sure that we all have a good idea what commitment means. But then again that may be assuming too much. I have just recently realized that I assume way too many things about what people understand. I thought I no longer assumed a lot of things about people and I have just recently been brought back to earth in my assumption of my amount of assuming.

So even though I said I was not going to give a definition lecture and I am not going to break my promise but I do have to give the definition of commitment because I can not assume that everyone knows what it is.

Commitment: a pledge or promise; obligation, engagement; involvement. (Definition used from: Dictionary.com)

I have been pondering the meaning of commitment. Thankfully I am no longer pondering it from the side of men since I do have the commitment of a wonderful man. But there are so many other commitments in our lives. I am not going to start a long discourse on every one of those things because they are different for every one of us. But I am going to discuss it as it pertains to living in community.

Commitment in community is a promise to live alongside people and gives you an obligation to consider others more than yourself but it is so much more than that it is engagement and involvement. You can not live in community without being engaged and involved and here is the weird thing there are actually people who think that they can live in community without involving in yourself in life together, without working, eating and having fun with the people that you live with. Engagement is a huge part of living in community engaging in life, engaging by recognizing your emotions and communicating them. But it is so much more than that it is an almost overwhelming sense of being with others, engaging in life. When a commitment is entered in to by any number of people it takes the vulnerability of all parties and a desire to place others needs (and sometimes even wants) before your own.

When a commitment is broken it carries with it every feeling of every other kind of brokenness. When commitment is broken and not even recognized as a broken commitment by one or more of the parties involved it makes it even worse. I am in the midst of broken commitment. Unfortunately whenever this happens it doesn’t matter how much reasoning I do and it really doesn’t matter how often I attempt to talk myself out of the broken feelings for me to really get through it and come out the other side still holding on to my own commitments I have to engage in the brokenness.

Worth It

I headed to the bathroom which is located right behind the main cabin, it is actually attached to it but can only be accessed from the outside. Relevant information only if you visit us at some point but it sets the mood for the story. Anyway, I am headed to the bathroom and find the door locked, not a surprise considering there is 1 bathroom being shared by 10 adults. I then quickly turned around (who knows how long they are going to be in there!) and headed to the nearest outhouse, we have two of them. The outhouses are finally functional again. Not that you couldn’t use them during the winter but it would be at the great risk of getting frosty… uumm… cheeks.

This little outhouse event occurred after spending the afternoon hammering the old rusty nails out of the old barn wood so that we can finish the interior of our cabin. A cabin that I should mention is just over 400 square feet. No kitchen. No bathroom. No running water.

Why you may wonder do we live in such circumstances? That is a fairly normal question. Most people tend to pawn it off as us being hippies or even the dreaded C word. You know the C word. I wouldn’t call it either. But then again who ever asks the people who are actually living it? Labels, names, all that comes from the outsiders, those observing.

Now when asked about living in a community setting it would be easy to rattle off the inconvenience of not having the normal amenities in the house or sharing a kitchen and having to wait for the bathroom. And then there are the occasions when I am pounding old nails out of old boards that I would kind of like to go purchase the boards new and cut out all the middle part. But there is something about putting the extra work in to the boards that we are putting up. The boards have character. People pay thousands of dollars for refurbished barn wood. I am saving us $$$ and saving is pretty much as good as earning right? In theory anyway. I don’t really know if it works out on paper that way. Either way it is the effort that I am putting in to these boards and the fact that they are not generic. No one else has these boards, pre-made boards don’t have their character, no other boards have my time investment and that makes them all the more unique and all the more mine.

My boards are like my community. There are things right off the bat that look like they are more work and may actually take a higher initial investment, even more than that they take a more personal investment, it is something I can’t just throw money at. Then there are the things that I was thinking about while hammering the nails I was making a bonus list of living in community (if that is what you would like to call it and for lack of a better word). We pay $450 a month, that includes groceries, house payment, internet, electricity, supplies… it doesn’t include the cell phone. That allows me to stay home with the mini man while superman can work just one job to me that is worth the outhouses. I have built in baby sitters not only that but they are people that also care about him like no baby sitter could. I don’t have to be alone. Even though I am a stay at home mom I have adults to talk to. “These are just a few of my favorite things”.

In the end you just can’t put a dollar amount on character or on being able to commune with others and it’s worth the outhouses and everything else because there is freedom in the lack of claiming individual rights.

Health Care

I would venture to guess that blood was boiling before the actual reading of this blog commenced. Health care is an extremely hot topic as of late and so I figured that I would go ahead and share my opinion with you all. Now before you get your undies in a bundle I will first off state what I am actually going to be talking about. I am not going to let you in to my own personal opinions on this matter in this case the a recent quote that I picked up is completely appropriate, well if not appropriate at least it fits the situation fairly well and at the very least is bound to raise some eyebrows”opinions are like a**holes, everyone’s got one”. My opinion is not going to be on the health care plan itself but on a select group of the nay-sayers. I am not specifically picking on this particular group of nay-sayers or really on the nay-sayers in general, in fact you may never know whether I am counting myself amongst the nay-sayers or not and I am not likely to tell you. This particular group of nay-sayers has had the happy chance of catching my attention and even evoking several chuckles in the process of airing their strong nay-saying opinions to the general public and since they felt that it was not only a good idea to make public their political opinion on this issue but they felt it necessary to invoke the criticism (or acclaim) of whomever happened to read their Facebook status I thought that it was obviously an invitation to elaborate, pick apart or otherwise discuss these views.

The task at hand is to discuss those who are in the military complaining that under the new health care reform they will have to pay for the health care of others. I have heard it mentioned several times by several different military men that they are extremely peeved about that fact. At first glance I did not even pause as I lazily continued to scroll down my list of yahoos and nay-sayers all putting in their 2 cents about the health care reform. It wasn’t until a day later that I began to chuckle. A thought had suddenly struck me, “how absurd” I thought, actually it may be downright humorous that people from the military are complaining about paying the health care of others since I sit here as a tax payer paying not only their wages but also their… you got it… health care! HA! So of all the nay-sayers I must say my hats off to the beloved (and yes I do appreciate you) military men that made my week by airing the political opinions on Facebook.

Life is Shallow

There are some blogs that I write in a spontaneous burst and then later I regret that I wrote it for no other reason than I think it is shallow. Being shallow isn’t a crime. People make millions off being shallow every day. I even subscribe to shallowly written things. Seriously. I know that you are all now booing me but I have to admit that I actually have a subscription to Glamour. I actually kind of hope that you all didn’t think that of me. It isn’t a secret but I most definitely don’t advertise the fact. Why? Because it is shallow. So why do I dislike shallowness? Well I happen to be one of those kinds of people who like “deep” things. Deep conversations, thoughtfully written pieces, music that moves me, etc. I would in no ways call myself an intellect but I do enjoy “deep” thought. Sometimes I get caught up in that. So much so that many times I forget to have fun. I judge myself quite harshly and how I use my time. The problem with that is often that overflows in to all areas of my life and overflows on to others. Unfortunately you can’t treat yourself one way and others another. This easily leads right in to several other posts that I have written before concerning learning how to relax, learning how to have fun. Maybe learning isn’t the right word. Allowing is actually the word I am looking for. I know how to do these things I just don’t let myself. I find ways to guilt myself out of them. Things I should be doing. Harder things. “Deeper” things. This piece I am about to post is a personal creed of mine from one of my favorite dead guys Oswald Chambers. He demolishes my sense of being deep and stomps on the thought that there is a deep and shallow and higher and lower level and leaving me free to live shallowly deep.

“Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow concerns of life are not ordained of God; they are as much of God as the profound. It is not your devotion to God that makes you refuse to be shallow, but your wish to impress other people with the fact that you are not shallow, which is a sure sign that you are a spiritual prig. Be careful of the production of contempt in yourself, it always comes along this line, and causes you to go about as a walking rebuke to other people because they are more shallow than you are. Beware of posing as a profound person; God became a Baby.

To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps: the ocean has a shore. The shallow amenities of life, eating and drinking, walking and talking, are all ordained by God. These are the things in which Our Lord lived. He lived in them as the Son of God, and He said that “the disciple is not above his Master.”

Our safeguard is in the shallow things. We have to live the surface common-sense life in a common-sense way; when the deeper things come, God gives them to us apart from the shallow concerns. Never show the deeps to anyone but God. We are so abominably serious, so desperately interested in our own characters, that we refuse to behave like Christians in the shallow concerns of life.

Determinedly take no one seriously but God, and the first person you find you have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself.” Oswald Chambers

Spring Bug

Help! I am being attacked by the shopping bug!

A little background info on me. I am not a huge shopper. If it weren’t for my husband, sister and What Not to Wear I would always look half put together, or half not, depending on whether you are the glass half empty or half full types. Me? I am the half empty type. I don’t even bother claiming to be a “realist” I just know that I am liberally infused throughout with pessimism, or cynicism, take your pick. It may have something to do with the years traveling the road. It may have to do with working with so many people. Not really sure though I am sure that a psychiatrist would have a heyday explaining it to me.

Back to the shopping. I think it has something to do with spring. We cleaned up the lawn. My house is getting the walls put in. The sap is flowing, there are buds on the trees. I think this all leads in the shopping direction. Why? New things! So this is what is on my shopping list:
1. Vibram Five Finger shoes. I just have to have a pair of these, they are amazing! I love going barefoot and these shoes are just perfect. Plus I found them in the most amazing color…
2. A new purse. Oddly enough I am not much of a purse girl either but I found one the other day that is just plain yummy. I seriously am needing to buy this purse.
3. Carpet. I am getting the walls done and now I need a piece of carpet to put in the loft.
4. A food processor. We have been along OK without one but it is becoming increasingly needed.
5. Ribbon because I need to dress up the plain headbands that I just bought for my oh-so-mod hair.
6. I would really like to buy some stuff to design my wall decorations BUT I will be able to put this off because my walls aren’t done yet.

I honestly thought there was something more but I guess that is it. The good thing is I can usually guilt/talk myself out of buying most everything so I think I am safe (I hope?) But the shoes may do me in.

Now that I have inflicted you all with my shopping desires I am sure you have wasted under 5 minutes reading this and can now set your mind free to make a spring shopping list of your own and if you need any help guilting yourself out of buying something just drop me a note because I am an expert. Just ask my shopping hubby.

Pet Peeve

So today’s discourse is nothing but a rant plain and simple. Pet food commercials. They are on my top 10 hate list. Hate is actually the wrong word. Despise is a good one. They make me want to vomit. My favorite commercial to hate is the Blue commercial. It talks about how every other pet food is made out of byproduct and how pets are family therefore they need to eat as well as your family member. This pet food advertises that it has real meat, veggies and fruit. Another commercial I love to hate shows a mother pouring some unmarked dry food in to her kids’ bowls and states that you wouldn’t feed your kids dry food so why would you feed it to your pet? This commercial happens to be advertising refrigerated pet food. These commercials disgust me. Don’t get me wrong I love animals. I enjoy my dog and have always had pets. I have cried when my pets have died and I care for them by feeding them well and providing for their health and even for their happiness. This is my beef with the pet food. Pets are animals. Period. They are not children. To rate a pet as a human demeans what it means to be a human. Ok so I have another beef with the commercials. In the light of the recent disasters around the world but in mind especially the horror of Haiti it seems pathetic that we should be told that our pets need to eat the best meat, fruits and vegetables there is to offer. It almost makes me sick every time I see them as I think of the people who are going without. I know that it doesn’t matter if I feed my pet a slightly lower grade food, they are animals for crying out loud, in the wild they eat dead things! Human beings on the other hand are meant to be nourished with actual food. Believe me my pet feels no less loved because I didn’t feed her refrigerated food this morning but if I would have fed my son some sort of ground of chicken meal he would be one hungry unhealthy little boy.

Shame on you pet food purveyors there are people out there in need of food let pets eat byproduct, they always have.

BS

Sometimes I surprise myself with how totally capable I am at BSing. Seriously. I write articles as a little sideline job. It doesn’t make much and that doesn’t really bug me because I tally it up as being pure profit because 1. I don’t have to buy any special clothes for the job, I could do it in my pjs and hair curlers if I really wanted to (Yeah, I said hair curlers, I am totally in to the whole 50′s housewife thing. That was the 50′s when they did that right?), 2. We don’t have to own a second car for it and 3. I don’t have to pay for childcare because I am home and can do it during nap time or after the boys go to bed. Therefore it is pretty much the perfect job. The not so perfect parts about it is that it doesn’t pay really well and I have to write a lot of articles about things that I am not so interested in. I also have to write articles about products that I don’t use or procedures I think are dumb. Things like that. What I have found out though is that I can write about these things in a totally convincing tone like I actually care about what I am writing about. How do I know this? Because people actually accept my work. I guess that is a good thing. It’s a good thing because I get to keep the job. As I was putting the finishing touches on my latest article, which I happened to enjoy writing because it was actually about something that I care about and the person who ordered the article actually gave some leeway for artistic interpretation, so not a completely brain-dead type of job. Anyway, as I was finishing this article I had to chuckle to myself because I felt so full of BS. There are times in life when it just seems like the situation calls for some measure of BS. And I don’t mean being fake. I mean just plain (And this is where the whole equating the article writing to what I am about to talk about ends) “fake it ’til you make it” jazz. There have been so many times in my life where I did not want to talk to one more person or play one more song or drive our 1970′s bluebird converted house bus to one more place with new people and I just plain had to BS my way through it and through that I ended up not only tolerating life but “livin’ it large” to quote a young man we met at the beginning of our travels. I get tired of seeing people call it quits just because they don’t feel it any more. I have seen so many people quit things just because they were difficult. Marriages, jobs, ministries, organizations, family, eating healthy, exercise, breastfeeding and sometimes even life. Now I know you might thinking “you can’t BS your way out of those kinds of situations!” and you are right. I can’t just BS my way out of things. First I have to face the facts. I have to call things what they are. I have to realize that the articles are not something I can really believe in but that they are a real way that I can bring a little extra in to our little family that doesn’t have much (Haha, the example is back in full force and with renewed applicability!). Then I have to take my feelings about those things, whatever they might be and find a way to give them expression. And then I BS. I fake it. Really. I act as if. I act until my emotions catch up. Because they will. The key is honest evaluation. Calling things as they are. No BS.

Good Morning

I am not a morning person. I have never been a morning person. From the time I turned 13 I stayed up way too late reading. Ok so I admit it I was a homeschool nerd. I practically day-dreamed about the book I was going to read that night. And that is about all it took me to read it. One night. I don’t know what has happened to me. Wait. Yes I do. His name is Jude. He happened to me.

I am getting up at 6 something every single morning. Yuck. Why? Jude of course. Why? I have no clue! Seriously, what is going through his little pea brain? It is hardly light then. We have to turn all the lights on! I do not think that I am going to convert in to a morning person. For some reason I seem to be able to get up and be fairly cheery every morning. I used to swing at people who tried to wake me up. In my sleep, really, I was sleeping, I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not that mean. Ok, so maybe I am. Mean that is. A little.

The problem with getting up that early is the fact that I seem to need to eat two extra meals just because we got up at 6. I mean I seriously have to consider how much food one actually needs to eat and all because of that dang morning number. The bonus is that I am exercised and showered before 10.

Mornings are just one of the things that my son has “gifted” me with. Special don’t you think?

Experience Life

I have experienced something totally amazing. It is chocolate (And all the women say “duh” like you didn’t know that was the most wonderful thing ever?) It has to be on the most sensual experiences ever (Besides sex of course which still rates above chocolate in my book). All you virgins out there just ignore that last set of parentheses. I think that chocolate and sex are very similar. They both send trigger “happy hormones” in your body and even if you have had the worst day ever they seem to make things brighter, or at least tolerable. Of course if the reason you are PO’d happens to be your hubby then you might want to stick with the chocolate scenario and I am about to let you in on this amazing experience.

This new chocolate sensation is by Chocolove and is sea salt and almonds in dark chocolate. I feel amazing just talking about it. It may be a taste fad but I am kind of doubting it. The problem is that I now live in terror that they might discontinue it at some time. But isn’t that how all great things are? You have to live in the moment and enjoy it to the fullest. I love this chocolate because it has nuts, life should be a bit nutty, you should have nuts in your life and be a bit of a nut. The sea salt is like tears, tears of laughter, tears of pain and tears of sorrow, life has no depth without tears, salt adds depth, I bet you didn’t even know it had been missing in all other chocolate. You’ll understand when you taste it. Just like life. You can’t explain life to someone, they have to take a leap of faith and try it out for themselves. And then there is the dark chocolate. I am a dark chocolate lover anyway. Dark chocolate has just that perfect hint of bitterness. Bitterness is not something that I advocate in life but I equate this kind of bitterness to something like old hurts, life scars, it shows that you have lived and makes you enjoy everything right down to its dark bitter-y depths.

Don’t take my word for it. Go experience.

Embracing the Inner Mod

I can’t seem to leave well enough alone. It seems to me that blogs just scream for new themes. I am glad that at least I have not figured out how to use WordPress well enough to tweak it too much in some ways because I think it would become some sort of obsession.

I care more about what the content is that what the cover looks like but it sure can be fun to change the look. Mostly it is because I am searching for “the” look. The look that says “read me”, “take me seriously”, “enjoy me”, “I’m smart and witty”, etc.

It’s the same with my hair. Seriously. I can never leave well enough alone. Right now I am attempting for the thousandth time in almost as many years (Ya, so bite me for exaggerating) to grow my hair out. I am, thus far, successful which really is not saying much. I am constantly on the hunt for the right look. I don’t want to be too “cute” but I don’t want to look all vamp-sexy all the time either but I can’t look frumpy but… I want my hair to say almost everything that I would like my blog to say now how weird is that? The deal is that it can be very tricky because I have always been drawn to slightly whimsical and wispy hairstyles but I have the thickest and straightest hair ever. I do mod. I do mod very well. Ugh.

So embrace is the name of the game. I am going to embrace the inner and outer mod.

Whatever that means.

Milk Toast

Every so often I feel like giving a little word lecture. Not because I think that everyone doesn’t know the meaning of the word I am about to lecture on. I would never presume that anyone presides in such ignorance. And for the most part I don’t even presume that you care a rat’s butt about my little word lecture I am going to give but that’s OK because it’s your own fault that you are here reading this.

Today’s word lecture is (drum roll accompanied by bated breath): Disappointment (Tada!). Was that just shock and awe that I saw register on your face? No? Bummer. I was hoping for some sort of dramatic reaction not some sort of caustic smirk. The definition of disappoint is:
1. To fail to fulfill the expectations or wishes of: His gross ingratitude disappointed us.
2. To defeat the fulfillment of (hopes, plans, etc.); thwart; frustrate: to be disappointed in love.
Disappointment is synonymous with the words: Sadden, disillusion, dishearten, disenchant.
So you may be wondering something along the lines of “So what’s up with the down-in-the-dumps post?” at this point. Hang with me and you may get your answer soon unless it is anything like the last blog where you will leave wondering where this is all going. That is, by the way, what happens when you try to put your thoughts together sometime after 11 p.m. when you have a toddler.
I realized something the other day while I was watching TLC’s What Not To Wear. I know you are gaping in horror right now considering how shallow I am. But it’s true. I love that show. It is part of my “vain hour” even though it is a bit over an hour, my vain hour includes exercise, What Not To Wear and a shower, all during nap time. Anyway, while I was watching What Not To Wear the other day I realized that I want their job. OK, so not their job per se but a job like their job. Something that transforms a person in 1 week giving them a new look, new confidence… etc. I wouldn’t say that their job is easy. Actually I am guessing that it can be quite frustrating. But I do think that their job is gratifying. Right now I would like to have a gratifying job. All the “career” paths that I have chosen so far in my life are not all that gratifying and gosh dang it if they aren’t the slowest moving “careers” to see “success” in on the face of the planet! (OK so maybe I am exaggerating just a bit)
I am disappointed. I am disappointed that things take so long and that people don’t change as quickly as I would like. I am disappointed that the walls in my tiny cabin are not finished and that it is starting to give me cabin fever. That and there is still snow on the ground and after struggling my son in to all his winter clothes he only wants to be outside for 10 minutes before he is freezing and wants to come back in. Probably just so that he can track snow all over my floor. I am disappointed about the fact that I want certain things in my life that just don’t seem to be happening on my time frame. I am disappointed that I am going to turn 25 and don’t feel like I am. Even though I don’t even know what that is supposed to feel like and maybe that is disappointing as well. I have never been good about learning new things. I always think that I need to be good at it right off the bat and I give no room for error. I think perfection should happen right off the bat. Why? I’m really not sure. I don’t have OCD, really. OCD is a disorder and I am pretty sure that I am too ordered to have a disorder. Then again that is another disappointment, health stuff that I also is not in my area of control. I hate not being in control.
Now before you get carried away and assume that I think my life is a failure and everything is a disappointment I am going to clarifying by saying this is not the entirety of my life by any means it is just a portion of my life. There are plenty of things that I am happy and content with and as sooner I embrace my disappointment the sooner it can transform in to action and contentment. Though I still wouldn’t mind having a gratifying insta-transformation job.
My theme for now believe it or not is also off What Not to Wear (Yup, go ahead and roll your eyes) “Why go through life being milk-toast when you could be mocha almond fudge?” Stacey from What Not to Wear. And to me sometimes that means you have to accept extreme disappointment because not having disappointments in your life would also mean that you did not experience extreme joy. I would rather be a wild flavor with all it’s nuts than milk-toast.

Stupid Chickens

Jude and I cleaned the chicken coop today. It was sunny (finally) and 31 degrees today so we were practically out in our shorts. We took advantage of the good weather and went to clean out the chicken coop. There is nothing worse than leaving a chicken coop uncleaned all winter long and then doing it in one big haul in the spring. Ugh. Not to mention the cruelty of making your hard-working hens live in their own crap for months on end. As I was hacking away at the frozen chicken —– and sweating because of the balmy MN temperature. The chickens kept getting in my way. They had great weather and an entire outdoor yard to utilize while I was cleaning out the coop but there were a stubborn few that insisted on getting underfoot. At one point I whipped the seat off my brow and kicked at a chicken and spat out “stupid chicken!”. Then I started laughing at myself. What a redundant sentence. What is a chicken if it isn’t stupid? They may actually be the definition of stupid. Seriously.

Now I am going to embark on the next piece of my screed with a serious breach of conversation etiquette. I actually copied a piece of a conversation that I had with a friend the other day. The conversation started by me stating that lately I was feeling very mediocre. Like everything that I did and had done and become was just that, mediocre. My friend’s response was this, and I quote (verbatim): “Lol, yah, when I think of you, I think, intense, frighteningly purposeful perhaps, or loud. Mediocre is not on that list.”
Now you might be wondering what in the world this has to do with the chicken story and for one moment I actually had a brain fart and even I couldn’t remember they connection between them.
But for some reason the second after I made the absurd connection that I had just spouted out a totally redundant sentence by calling the chicken stupid I also realized that how foolish it was to be upset about the chicken being what it was and how it obviously was not going to help the situation for me to get angry with said stupid chicken. In reality the only thing that was seriously harmed was my sentence structure. This has now been moving on to a deeper revelation having to do with afore stated conversation and ultimately back to the feeling of mediocrity itself. I suddenly realized how silly the whole situation was and I laughed at myself. I realized that my friend was right. I do have plenty of flaws but mediocrity is definitely not high on the list. I did on the other hand realize that the real difficulty is that I am too intense. I actually had a conversation with my mom and sister the other day where I ended up blurting in frustration that it is hard work for me to relax. Talk about an oxymoron. Ok so honestly I didn’t think about how oxymoron-ish it was until my mom and sister pointed it out. But it’s true. It may seem totally silly that someone could actually say that it is work to relax but that is the case for me. And there is where I find myself. I actually find some way to plague myself with something (stupid chickens) just to keep some phantom of mediocrity from breathing down my neck while at the same time working at relaxing. In Minnesota language “OOOFFF DUH” talk about a merry-go-round. Feeling sick yet?

Bare bones conclusion to the story is that I am working out a “duh” moment and don’t even know where it is going yet but it has something to do with mediocrity, chickens, poop (darn potty training), intensity, flaws, silliness, revelation, redundant sentences and oxymorons.

Dear Son

Sometimes I think that I have turned in to a raving lunatic.

Now before you read any further this is the disclaimer for this post, so please read in thoroughly. I love my son. He is great. We have a lot of fun. He also drives me insane sometimes. If you are not a parent you will not understand this. Do not even pretend that you do because you just can’t. I thought I knew something about parenting until a became one, a parent that is. If you are a parent then you probably don’t have any room to judge anyway. You know you have had insane episodes just like I have. That is unless you are a Stepford-wanna-be and in that case you should probably just stop reading now, it will just disturb your perfect life.

Why is it that my son insists on getting up so early even if he went to bed late? He is actually more likely to get up earlier if he has gone to bed late. Can anyone explain the logic in that?

Why is it that my son insists on walking around while he eats? Isn’t his chair comfortable enough? What about socializing while eating? Does he not remember that the last time he did that the dogs took his food away?

Seriously son, if you are tired please nap! Why do you insist on sitting in your room for an hour, exhausted, and then come out and torment your mother for the rest of the afternoon because you are overly tired but it is because you chose not to sleep!

Why do we have to read the same book and watch the same movie?

Why in the world do you like those horribly, wretchedly annoying squeaky “I’m talking to a child” voices?

Why oh why oh why will you not go on the potty when you can tell me when you are poopy, you know what a diaper is and you can say “potty power!”.

Is it really necessary to scream? I mean you know what you want, you have words, why don’t you ask? Things happen faster when you ask, really, trust me.

What makes you think that “no” means “do it again”?

Who taught you how to hit?

“Holy cow” does not sound right coming out of a child’s mouth. Please forget that I have ever used that phrase.

How can you sense when mom is beat and use it to your advantage? Don’t you think that is kind of evil?

Daddy is your friend. Seriously. He can do things for you too.

Above all, please remember that I love you and even though you can be a wretched little snot-booger sometimes I wouldn’t have you any other way because you are making me grow up in areas that I didn’t even know I had!

Abducting the Future

I was just reading the story about the Baptists who are being held in Haiti for allegedly trying abduct 33 children, you can check the story out for yourself here. My dad brought our attention to this story yesterday as he had listened to the radio on his way home from town and had just happened to catch the latest Haiti news. Now before I proceed with my diatribe I want to make a couple of things clear:

1. I am not opposed to adoption I think it is a great thing and for some people and children it is the very best thing.

2. I am not knocking that these people were trying to be helpful in very desperate and desolate circumstances, knowing what you should do in these types of situations is very difficult.

Now that we have that out of the way I will proceed.

What exactly is it about people that makes them think that just getting children out of difficult countries and situations and giving them to someone else (other than their family) is the best idea? Many children that are in orphanages in Haiti are not actually orphans, they may in fact have parents, if they do not have parents they may have aunts uncles or grandparents. In Mexico it is not even legal for anyone to actually start an orphanage. The only real orphanages in Mexico are state-run all the rest of the so-called orphanages are actually children’s homes which means that children from under privileged families can be brought to these homes and left there to be fed and educated, kind of like a boarding school.

Someone once asked me if children could be adopted from Mexico and I told them that no they could not, the person I was speaking with was shocked. I continued by telling them that orphans in Mexico can only be adopted by other Mexicans, the state has decided that this is the best way for the children to grow up that way they can preserve their language and culture, they feel that if children are sent somewhere else that they will lose their identity and that Mexico will be giving away its future. In many ways they are correct. We hear it all the time “our children are our future”. We as Americans firmly believe that, or at least that is what we say that we believe. So it is very interesting to me that we automatically assume that what is in the best interest for poor children in other countries is to be removed from those countries, from their culture and their language, removed from their people and to be placed in an American home. We do no think about that other country’s future, we removed it from them.

Can you imagine what we as Americans would think if someone decided that American orphans would be better off somewhere else? Lets say that they decided since there is a lower obesity rate in Sweden and since they don’t allow sugary commercials to be targeted at children that Sweden is a better place for American orphans to be raised and therefore the majority of American orphans begin to be adopted out to Sweden where they lose their language and their American heritage. What would you think about this? What do you think Americans would think about this? Do you think you might feel insulted?
So now lets take it even a step further, how about we start sending foster children to other countries? They may have family that just are not able to take care of them at the moment but it doesn’t matter because there are other countries that could and will raise them better. How about children who may have living parents? What if after Katrina we started rounding up the children that were temporarily separated from their families due to the chaos during the disaster and we started adopting those children out to Canadians?

Is your blood boiling yet? Are you feeling like someone is taking your future? Abducting your heritage?

Now, like I said there are legitimate adoptions and legitimate circumstances that are great for both the adopting families and the children but I think that there needs to be a little thinking change as far as children and adoptions go, children are not only our (as Americans) future but they are Mexico’s future, Haiti’s future, India’s future, Sweden’s future, China’s future… and each one of these countries are full of language and history and culture. We can not abduct someones future even if it is a well-meaning abduction.

The "C" Word

The C word, there it sits, bloated and yet still stuffing its fat face with time, resources and people from all over the world. If there were a rallying cry of capitalism it would go something like this “all for me and none for some!” and of course there is no shame in that because we work hard to get what we have and if anyone else wants a piece of it all they have to do is work as hard as we have.

After driving through the Navajo Native reservation we sat down with some people and expressed our dismay of how these people are living. There are cardboard and tarp shacks, there is no electricity, no grocery stores, no anything for miles and miles and miles, the reservation is a desolate wasteland. The response of the people we were sitting with? “They like that way.” This is a good place to insert my favorite expression, SERIOUSLY!? No one wants to live that way! No one wants to live in a tar paper shack with nothing, no one wants to go hungry, no one wants to see their children not clothed or fed, everyone wants a good comfortable life with opportunities for them and their children. Now there is a big difference in how people view comfort and “plenty” a good example would be our India team talking to someone in India who told them that in heaven they would be happy because they would not even have to haul their own wood. Good grief! Me in my little tiny cabin in the north woods of MN where I do haul my wood am practically living in “heaven” for them! I could turn on an electric heater, I could move if I want to, I could get a job, my husband has the opportunity to attend school and learn a new trade, the choices that I have are so varied.

Since I took off on a rabbit trail there let’s get back to the original topic. Capitalism. I am paying over $1.60 for gas in the dead of winter. Just so that the oil companies can jack the price up to pushing $4 a gallon this summer, why? Capitalizing. We have to buy gas, we don’t have options for public transportation even if we did who would actually use them because I hear a long litany of complaints already, “it’s too slow, I have to wait, it’s too crowded, I don’t like the kind of people who use public transit” and blah blah blah blah blah. Plus who wants to put on the same level as the rest of everybody? If we are all standing waiting for some sort of public transportation how are we going to know who is working at an office and who manages Burger King?

We are one of the only countries with military bases all over the world. We like to capitalize on our “peace keeping” missions and go ahead and plop a base down. Now we don’t actually want to take care of the country we are in, we just want to keep an eye on things. And! If anyone dares to not “share” their wealth then KAH BAM! we are going to slap a trade embargo on them just as a little slap on the hand and reminder of who is really in control. Now if you are really out of control and a trade embargo just doesn’t cut it then we are just going to have to send someone to assassinate your president (dictator, ruler, whatever), sorry, it just had to be done for the greater good, gotta knock that Axis of Evil ya know. C stand for another word that goes well with capitalism, crush. Capitalism reminds me of a machine with large metal teeth, moving forward on big metal tracks, it rolls over all opposition that it can not grind up swallow and (excuse my language) crap out as something useful for its drivers to consume.

I was trying to plug my ears last night as my mom did a break down of Avatar, first off we all really enjoyed the movie, it was entertaining and visually stunning and had a good story, so we were all discussing the different angles of this moving when my mom suddenly puked out the horrible reality of the story because this is how Avatar would really end in Capital world: The men go back home with their butts kicked they get more men, more guns and more money because while they have been getting their tails kicked there has been none of that rock stuff being mined so consequently it has shot up on the market because there isn’t any available. The men with guns and money return and they round everyone up and put them on reservations, they then destroy the special tree and proceed to mine their rock. The End.
I wanted to act like a little kid and plug my ears and say “NAH NAH NAH”, I told my mom that I didn’t want to know what would actually happen, I wanted to keep the warm fuzzy the-movie-ended-perfectly feeling and that is destroyed by actually thinking about the warm fuzzy ending that wouldn’t even exist, ok so neither do the blue people but you get my point.

Seriously…

And here we are thinking that we are so much better than the other big C (Communism) because everyone knows that we won the cold war definitively when we landed on the moon. So really we have greater scientific minds, we know how to “utilize” every opportunity to it’s fullest and we have more nukes, beat that!

The End.

Are you worth it?

So what exactly defines someone’s worth? Is it what they do? The warm fuzzy “who they are”? Then the real question, do you even know who they are? Is it because they were born, because they breath air? Is it if they have your skin color or speak your language? Of course most of us shudder at the mere thought that we would be anything but open-minded and willing to accept anyone regardless of race or creed but come now, you are actually going to tell me that you don’t balk at what is different? That some statements don’t make you cringe and some people make you uncomfortable?

I will tell you the truth. There are situations and people and places, there have been languages and culture and foods that have completely weirded me out. Honestly, I tried my best to be “open-minded” and to stay cool, to shrug the circumstance off to hide the fact that I looked completely different from all the other people surrounding me and that it made me uncomfortable. I would like to say that I have never stared at someone because they were different or that I have willingly, and without grimacing, eaten all food placed before me. I would like to say that there are not cultural things that I don’t understand and that there is not anything that I just plain dislike. But I would be lying, to myself and to you. I would like to say that I completely find someone’s “worth” by who they are and just because they are human not by what they do but when I take an honest look at myself I realize that I demand large amounts from myself and therefore have that expectation of others as well and am disappointed when those expectations are not met. Do I think these are good characteristics? Am I proud of these things? No. But what is the point of lying to myself? How can I ever change if I never see myself for what I actually am not what I would like to be.

My favorite ruler to judge by is the amount that someone gets done, how hard they work and if they take on extra. Why is this my favorite? Because it is the ruler with which I judge myself. It’s my standard and therefore in my estimation the standard. And a ruler and standard and measurements, measurements of worth. So I say it doesn’t matter if someone can not work and I say it is their own choice if they will not work but how can both be true can I measure myself that way and not others?

On another branch of that same tree is the question that was discussed at the clan lunch table here today. I write the newsletter for our org and have for years, the newsletters are infamously vague, mostly because there are so many very personal issues that are dealt with by our org that it would be wrong to write about it and send it out to all of our support team, they may know that person! We deal with many small towns so what if someone reads their personal life crap posted all over Facebook? Even with name omission it would be hard to keep under cover in small towns, or since the internet has made everything so much smaller it would be hard to not have most of everyone you know see the nitty-gritty of your life. How humiliating! So of course we are careful to omit that kind of detail in our letters which can tend to lead to vagueness. On the other hand when we are out of country it seems to be acceptable in the eyes of most to go ahead and print names and people’s personal stories and so on because when are they ever going to see it? And they certainly don’t know anybody that is going to be reading it so it is safe right? My question is and has been for quite some time, so how are they any different from the person down the street? Privacy is privacy right? A human being is a human being anywhere they live and should have the right to keep their dignity intact whether they know their name and story is being plastered all over the internet or not.

So where do you see someone’s worth? Or are you clean of the grime that I find staining me? What is your standard? And have you reached it? Are you worth it just as you are?

Face the Facts

Sometimes I really wish that I were a scrap booking mom. One of those moms who make cute little memory books and make all their “nooks” look cutsie, they sew or do crafts or paint or draw in combination with this scrapbooking skill it just seems like a nice thing to do, it seems like a stay at home mom thing to do. I am not at all like that. I hate scrap booking. Not only do I hate it but I am also not good at it, hence probably the reason for hating it, I generally don’t enjoy things that I am not very good at, I definitely rank that amongst my character flaws.
I also would like to be one of those blogging moms who have good pieces of information, yummy recipes and crafty ideas for your kids, one of those blogs that other mom’s bookmark and reference it times of need. Why? Because it seems like a warm fuzzy thing to do, it kind of gives me warm fuzzies just thinking about it, the kind of warm fuzzies that I usually get when I think about how nice it would be to scrapbook, and then it hits me, I hate scrapbooking!

My SM read my latest blog and said that he enjoyed it because it was “in your face” he said that that is my style and that is why I disliked my Christmas post because it was too cutsie. I had another conversation with a friend of mine who was talking about writing a blog and he stated that he wasn’t sure whether he should just make commentary on things that other people have written or whether he should write his own stuff, now don’t get me wrong I think that commentary is great because you get to see a piece of writing through eyes other than your own, sometimes you get a fresh perspective or grasp an elusive concept. To me it was a no brainer, why would you make commentary on someones elses stuff? What is the point? Don’t you have anything original to say? If not than why not? Like I said though, that is just me, maybe it’s a personality thing.

All this to say that I give up. I am done. I am not cutsie. I don’t like scrapbooking. I want to write my own stuff and at the very least re-word things since most everything has been said before but I hope to at least put a new twist on it. And I don’t want to live like everyone else not because I want to be different just because but I want to be ok with being different because that is already a fact. Let’s face the facts, I will never be an interior decorator and I will never be one of those moms with the cool crafty etsy shops. And you know what? I like it that way.

Seriously!?

I believe in my last blog that I revealed that the word “seriously” coupled with both an ! and a ? happens to be one of my favorite words or should I say phrases because I really do feel that both the ! and the ? are actually unformed words in this case. I have a variety of circumstances that I use this phrase in. Believe me living in community there are plenty of times when that phrase is necessary for the incredulous amazement I feel about another person’s actions. There are so many examples but I am not going to disclose them here, which seems to be a very common thing in my line of work, all kinds of interesting things happen and believe me living with this many people there are all kinds of mishaps, funny sayings, jokes, frustrations, etc. but how would it be right to post them all over the internet especially since many of you know the people I would be talking about! Even if I did not disclose names in a flimsy attempt to guard their “privacy”.
Privacy? HA! There is hardly any such thing around here. I think that my privacy boundaries have actually been enlarged probably past the point of many people’s ability to recognize them for what they are.

So that’s all there is, that’s it, that’s all I’m going to say, I am not even going to tell you why my phrase for today is SERIOUSLY!?

The Answer

Happy New Year! Can you believe that it is already 2010? I can’t. Seem like it was just yesterday that we were taking apart our old bus and remodeling it, leaving our farm and taking off in to the great unknown, the year was 1999 and almost everyone else was hunkering down with their Y2K supplies, us? we sold them with the house. I was a child. It also seems like eons ago. I am a wife, a mother, an adult. Enough reminiscing before I become all mooshy and this becomes another soppy New Year post not unlike my Christmas post which upon reading it again almost made me gag myself with a spoon.

New Years does bring on interesting topic up and I am sure you have already thought of this since if you didn’t make any I am sure you thought of making some or at the very least made fun of other people who were making them, that’s right, I’m talking about resolutions. I like to call mine “goals” but it is pretty much the same thing. SM (superman for those of you who don’t know, aka my hunka hub) and I talked a lot this past long weekend and made our lists, personal, together and community. Now I am supposing at this point you may be wondering where the angst is, where is the gripe, the sarcasm, why would you come here to read another piece on some New Year’s resolution that somebody else made? Good question. Don’t worry, you are not going to be privy to my New Year’s resolutions that is a MYOB area. So here it comes, the screed, the diatribe…

What is the deal with people wandering around b****ing about what they would love to do if and what they want to when moaning because they have to pay off such and such or do this and such, whining because they haven’t been given the opportunity or haven’t met the right person, blah blah blah. Seriously? The saddest part about all that is these people actually believe that those are the reasons that they are not doing the things that they truly want to do if it weren’t for the big if’s ands and butts, excuse me, buts, in their lives. I can not count how many times I have been told “you are so lucky to be doing what you are doing, I wish that I could do something like that.” I just watched several very funny movies and I will recommend them both to you here because they were the pathway to a great many laughs over the New Years weekend, “All About Steve” and “The Answer Man”, now you will have to bear through the first scene having a measurable amount of profanity in “The Answer Man” but don’t worry it goes up from there. There is a great line in the “Answer Man” where a young man has asked the guru of sorts why he can’t or isn’t doing what he wants to do with his life and the answer man gives him this answer (this is paraphrased) “you are doing exactly what you want to do because if you didn’t want to be doing it you would do something else.” BINGO! We are all doing exactly what it is that we want to do because if we didn’t want to be doing it we would do something else, we would find a way to become something different or to do something else. Too simplistic right? Not true you say? I did not say that doing something different wouldn’t cost you anything. On the contrary doing something different usually costs you everything or pretty darn close! It also is a brain cruncher because to do what you want to do generally leads to having to become creative and sometimes that leaves our couch potato brains a little mushed. You see we have been socialized in to accepting norms, patterns behavior and ways of living that define who we are and what we are worth. If you live outside of those people may desire what they see that you have but there is no desire to go through what you went through to get there.

In fact I have actually delivered invitations to people to do something that they had been dying to do that was their dream only to have them laugh and shrug it off as I stood in incredulous amazement. This thought seems to be one of my favorite and most frequent thoughts “SERIOUSLY?!” normally to be followed by either a blank look, which is a very difficult accomplishment for me since I tend to to be an open book, or more often than not, a raised eyebrow.

I don’t see the point of setting goals and making resolutions that I am not going to follow through. Why just dream? Dreams get you nowhere! At their best they are catalysts at their worst nothing but a vapor leaving behind the smell of acrid smoke that won’t wash out of your mind or soul. Now on the other hand I very well may fail one or more of my goals but I will fail because I tried and I will go down swinging.

There is a quote that hung on our refrigerator for years when I was a child, it was on a business card that my parents received from someone and has been repeated many many times in this household “If you will do for two years what most people won’t do you will do for a lifetime what most people can’t”. Two years? I can do almost anything for two years, and how do I know? I’ve tried! And failed! And succeeded! And I know because whatever it is I will have chosen to be there because if I don’t want to be I will do something else.

Community Baby

Our community is about to welcome another member in to its midst. One of our couples are expecting their first baby any day, at the moment they are 2 days past here EDD. I think babies being “late” is a good introduction to being a parent and how a baby is going to turn your life upside down and how your schedule is about to be arranged, permanently.
This baby will be welcomed in to the arms of his/her mom and dad and in to the arms of the whole community in the main community house.

The last baby that was born in that house was my niece. I have been wondering how this baby will be different. Honestly I have never really liked other peoples kids, well, it’s not that I don’t like them it is just that I have never really been one of those types who enjoys everyone’s kids and who can always be founding holding or playing with other people’s children. My niece is different, she is just a different kind of mine, my attachment to her is very different from the attachment I have with my son but it is also very different from any other child I have been around, she is also mine.
This baby that is about to arrive is not mine at all, he/she is not my niece/nephew, I have no relation to this child but at the same time I feel invested in her/his life, I have been at all of the prenatals, I will be there when he/she is born, I will hold him/her and I will watch him/her grow with my child(ren) and with my nieces and nephews. This baby will be different because I will make a commitment to this child, I will choose to be attached and then from the moment that child is born throughout it’s life I will need to be there.

I grew up with another family that was very close to us, the adults of this family were like the aunt and uncle that I never had. And then something happened, they moved away, the became angry with my parents, they divorced. I have not seen one of them for years and the other for a very long time. They have made no effort whatsoever to keep in contact with me. They were a constant loving presence throughout my childhood and then, suddenly, they abandoned me. I do not think they will ever know what I whole they left in my life. In light of that as this new child prepares to make its entrance in to the world I am preparing to receive him/her and to make a commitment to let him/her be a community baby and to form a new area in my life for what that is. It will not be the same as my child or the same as my niece because those are sacred spots in my life, family is family and there is a special place for that but there is also a special place for this new baby and I am busy going about making this new space so when he/she arrives he/she will find that there is a warm loving spot to attach, not just to his/her parents but to his/her community that has taken him/her as “their” baby.

Welcome to the new blog

I am very comfortable with moving. I have been doing it for a good part of my life. I am an efficient (though reluctant) packer and I can honestly say that I could pack everything in to a suitcase or two and drive off and not look back knowing that there is always other stuff to be had. I keep the stuff collection to a minimum in my house just in case something like that happened to be necessary, you never know what opportunity may arise and when. That’s what living in a bus will do for you. So in the spirit of moving here is my new blog! This blog offers more choices, more options for expansion, something new to learn and, most importantly it offered the chance on a new name. I needed something that caught the essence, or at least carried the idea, of what I am doing. You see, I am having somewhat of an identity crisis. I know that many of you may not understand this but save your snorts of derision and those of you who have already passed this point in your life save your haughty looks because this is my crisis and when you have one of your own I will promise to spare you my raised eyebrow.

It boils down to this, in a very few days it will be the year 2010, this is significant because we are now a decade in to the new millenium, it is the beginning of the 11th year since my family left our farm home in Montana and drove off in a converted bus but it also holds an even more personal significance for me; I am going to turn 25. Go ahead and laugh. Like I said, this is my crisis and I don’t expect you to understand the depths of the horror that strikes my heart when I hear that gawd-aweful number. I don’t know what I expected, I mean everyone turns 25 at some point, well at least we hope that they do! It sickens my like no other birthday. It seems like I am missing something to turn 25, like I should have accomplished something that I haven’t or that some elusive something should have happened that hasn’t yet, I don’t know, I really can’t explain where this specific fear comes from but it is there sitting like a rock in the back corner of my stomach waiting for the moment when I think of it so that it can drop and make me lose my appetite, which is amazingly hard to do by the way I really enjoy food. Back to naming the blog. I needed something that identified with this other me and this is what I came up with. Prepare to savor this little English lesson I am going to give you courtesy of dictionary.com:
Screed:

1. a long discourse or essay, esp. a diatribe.

2. an informal letter, account, or other piece of writing.

And for those of you who do not know what a diatribe is or who are too lazy to google it yourself:

Diatribe: a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism.
Now before you close this blog never to open it again I will clarify that I do not have any attention of abusing you and I have done much soul searching and for the most part have come up clean in the bitterness department though I have been accused of appearing bitter when sounding off on one of my opinions. I plan on attaching norms and challenging the pre-thought and pre-made, I am aiming to criticize as the in the definition “discuss the merits and faults of.” For the most part this will remain an informal piece of writing where I am prone to rant or flashback.

Read, enjoy, comment, discuss, criticize, contradict or leave.

This is Her Screed.