joy

ever wish you had someone to share joy with? hehe, i promise i'm not going to turn this into a pity party...

anyway...life is what we make of it. i get that. but it's nice to have folks along that either celebrate the joy while it's happening, or help you remember it when it's not exactly happening...or better yet, help you find it when you think it's gone.

i try to be one of those people. but i know i fall short. i know i get caught in my moods...and i know i share those moods when i should probably shelf them for a bit before looking for someone to share them with.

tonight i'm in one of those moods where you feel on the cusp of joy, but weighed down by something that i can only guess isn't joy. and you just wish someone would push you over. but probably, when i feel this on edge, i should just go to bed.

i wish i had a beer...

it does bring me joy to think of my sister fishing with my dad right now. i can almost feel the wind on the gulf when i think of her doing that. i can definitely hear her laugh. and she might not be laughing right now. but i'm pretty sure if i was there, she'd be laughing...(probably AT me, but i digress...)

my sister is on a journey to be a mother. she's not pregnant...at least not physically pregnant. but i think she's probably pregnant in other ways...reading about parenting, thinking about kids, wondering what hers will look like, imagining how she'll rearrange her home, her life, relationship with her partner once her kids arrive to her. she's going through the process to foster to adopt. and i am so proud of her. and so grateful to be able to be a part of her journey. i'm joyously excited to be looking forward to meeting my nieces or nephews or both...whichever she is given. (she's looking to foster to adopt a sibling group, but like always, i guess we'll see what life shoots her way...)

i am also thinking of my friend, jeanni...at the hospital in the middle of her first round of biochemotherapy. jeanni has taught me a lot about joy...feeling it in the moment...appreciating it. i will go stay with my friend lana and her beautiful, wonderful family next weekend so that i can visit jeanni and her family. this brings me so much joy, i think i might cry.

and tonight...tonight does bring me joy. it's been pretty warm lately. but it rained today. and now it's really cool outside. with a little breeze. the weather has a huge affect on me and tonight feels awesome. like i could sail away in that breeze, arms open wide, feeling it all.

ok...that's enough of that...
peace out

just some stuff today...

things i thought or said or heard today...

my youngest son, e, started off this morning by finding a long lost stuffed animal, squirt, and declaring it a "happy ever after kind of morning"...this is one of the beautiful things about having children.

ack...he later said something to n, my baby girl...but i cannot recall it. grrrr.... maybe it'll come to me before i finish typing.

at mass today, we had our penitential rite. i like this part. i missed it for YEARS when my older kids were small and i consider it making it to mass on time if i made it before the second reading. so it's meant a lot to me to be able to make it and recite it these last number of years. "i confess to you almighty god, and to you my brothers and sisters, that i have sinned through my own faults. in my thoughts and in my words. in what i have done and what i failed to do. and i ask almighty god and blessed mary ever virgin and you my brothers and sisters to pray for me to the lord our god." the thing i thought while i said this was that i am one of those sisters everyone else in the church is asking to pray for them. how i missed this for so long, i'm not sure. i may have the tiniest bit of egocentricity. i often look around and think about everyone present at church (and those not present) as my community....as my brothers and sisters....as folks traveling along this same earth. but i guess since i'm still kind of new to the penitential rite, it makes sense that this would be a new revelation. i have a lot of praying to do...

and my friend, mama jeanni, has completed her second day of her first cycle in her clinical trial for bio-chemotherapy. facebook has become the avenue to hear how she's doing...funny, isn't it? i almost fell over dead when jeanni joined facebook...she's just not much of a techno mama. well, i mean she's one hell of a techno mama...all programming space shuttles and whatnot. but she's not much of a recreational techno mama. but how grateful i am to get to hear about her on facebook. :D she and her husband and her son continue to be in my thoughts and prayers and, as always, in my heart.

why is it that after working on my lawnmower today, i can't stop smelling gasoline off and on? it's grossing me out.

my sister and i had a text discussion today about that lawnmower. and i am, as always, grateful for my sister.

and i am keeping my nose out of everything...even my own life. i realize that out of all the havoc i can cause in life, it's never as much as the chaos i'm capable of bringing to my own life. so i'm just staying out of it. hehe

and that's it. obviously, i'm just typing here to exercise my fingers and put some thoughts on the screen...organize a little of the knot of thoughts and experiences and feelings and words that is my brain. things are alright. but i am just tired, tired, tired.

oh hey, but i remembered the other thing e said. as baby sister was clocking him on the head and grabbing handfuls of his face in a way that was painful, and i was coaching him on different ways to work with her so that they could interact but him help her to be a little more gentle, he said, "mom, you sure know a lot about babies." and he then smiled his million watt smile. and that was awesome.

peace out

god's thumbnail

tonight the moon was what my grandmother used to call "god's thumbnail"...i believe astronomists call it a crescent. but it just seemed exactly like god's thumbnail once my grandmother pointed it out, and it's been that ever since.

i like to look at the sky at night. i'm looking for operating instructions, to be honest. sometimes it's very bright...sometimes it's very clear. i can almost always see orion in the late fall and winter, it seems. although i will admit i am so spatially challenged that as we rotate at night, i have a hard time finding him and it makes me shake my head and roll my eyes and laugh because it seems like as he moves in the same direction each night, it shouldn't be so hard to find him...but i admit i often walk inside, shaking my head and laughing and having no idea where the hell he went.

there's a sky i see sometimes...it's dark blue...midnight blue i guess (haha, snort)...but there's enough moon that when the clouds make this cool pattern, it looks like a dark blue tie dye pattern. and it reminds me of my friend jeanni. i think she has a shirt like this, but maybe i just made that up. so either way, it is what i have termed in my mind a "jeanni sky." and three nights ago (hell, i think it was three...it's been a busy week), there was a jeanni sky. and it didn't surprise me. jeanni's had some stuff going on, and i've been thinking about her lots. and i hadn't heard from her that night, so i'd been thinking about her especially because it felt kind of foreboding that i hadn't heard from her..."no news is good news" be damned.

i have since heard from her and it wasn't good news. it wasn't necessarily bad news, although jeanni could probably argue that with me if she had a mind to. and she might have a mind to. but she might also not freaking feel like it. the news was that life will change...and it always does...damn it. but why is it that when life deals you those lessons about change, it's always more than you ever wanted? and it is never the way you would've chosen.

marriage comes to mind at this point. we obviously choose to get married. but even then, it rarely goes the way you would've chosen and it's often more than you ever wanted.

but there's been a lot of change in this new year.

my friend julie is here with her new daughter...she's a week old...in her life as julie's daughter. well, a week and a day. julie's daughter is actually four years old. and she's from india. and she is the most amazing thing to hit my house since my daughter. this little one, who i've been calling ruby-roo, is beautiful and mesmerizing and just a damned good sport all around. no, she doesn't speak english. and no, we don't know her language. but we teach her a few words and she teaches us a few words and we all smile a lot because we are just so darned happy to hang out together. i am very honored that julie brought her here to share with all of us and hope it's been worth her while. (what the hell does worth her while mean? i mean, i know what the phrase means, but is that really how it's written out?...) but i'm not going to share with julie my feelings right now about change being more than we ever wanted or rarely going the way we would've chosen. we'll let her get a little further down the way and see if she notices this on her own...

but for me, right now, as i sit in the middle of these changes this year has brought, to those i love (and god, do i love them), as well as the change it's brought to my own life, i can't help but reflect on the things that stay the same (you totally saw that coming, right?).

love. love stays the same. it changes in our relationships, strengthens, weakens, waxes and wanes...like the moon...but it's always there. sometimes in different people, in different relationships, in ourselves and out. but it's there. we may ache for it in the same relationships, ache for it in ourselves, ache for it in the same ways it used to be there. and the ways will change. but the love will always be there. will always find us.

the older i get (and while i realize i may not be THAT old, i don't think anyone would argue that i'm not THAT young anymore either), the more surprised i am by the places i find love that i never would've thought i'd find it. and i'm even more surprised by how much love i find in me. now maybe that's because i've given up the belief that i am the generator of my life and i've opened myself up to the Love that is the true generator of us all. but even that surprises me. it's an act of faith. and while i've always had an easier time believing in good things (i mean really, santa and the easter bunny have never been a huge stretch for me and i never saw the big deal in my parents being the ones to really do it all...it all still happened and was good in the end...), i've always also believed that if i was good enough, did the right thing, earned it somehow, love would come. but now i know love is always there. always has been. always will be.

it may be a perspective thing. one person's trash is another's treasure type of deal. and i have learned not to push my trash on someone who doesn't want it...and the same goes for my treasure. people like to make these evaluations for themselves. we have to. that's part of the whole deal. but i know that love will always, in the end, find us. just like god's thumbnail found me tonight.

peace

question authority

i have a tshirt that says that..."question authority". my spouse doesn't really like it. or at least all he's said about it is to express some concern that a parent in our house wears a shirt in front of the kids that says that. i don't know why he's bothered by it. they questioned me long before i bought the tshirt, but anyway... (maybe he sees himself as the authority in our house and doesn't want me to encourage them questioning him? i dunno...)

anyway...today i got stopped by a police officer. i didn't get a ticket, but i did get a lecture. he was driving down a rather busy street in our town that i was approaching on a side street. and yes, i was approaching pretty quickly...a screaming baby in her car seat and being five minutes late to a guitar lesson can make your foot a little heavier. plus, it's a crappy side street, full of pot holes, and i can miss every single pot hole going exactly forty-five miles an hour...plus miss any cars that happen to be on that street, which is very few since it IS such a crappy street (that i must admit, i do not know the speed limit of). anyway...i stopped at the stop sign, noticed the crappy look the officer gave me, then pulled out behind him, where there were no other cars. i noticed him stopping in his lane (the right one) when i passed him (in the left). when he got behind me, i pretty much knew he was going to pull me over. at the light, i started wondering how i would see his lights since he was on a motorcycle and i didn't see where his lights would light up. but as soon as the light turned green, it didn't take long for the universe to answer that question for me. (rolling my eyes WAY BACK in my head...) so i pulled over, with him behind me...did i mention the fifteen year old was right next to me in the passenger seat? the officer came up and asked me for my license and registration, all official-like. so i got it out and gave it to him (OF COURSE wondering whether or not my license was current...and i knew it was, but cops just make me feel guilty even when i'm not). he told me that i shouldn't drive so fast down that street, asked me why i would endanger my passengers by doing so (which just ruffled my mama feathers, i mean seriously, what does he know about what i do to keep my passengers out of danger?). he then explained that i stopped passed the stop sign and how that is called "failure to stop" (which i felt was BULLSHIT but kept my mouth shut...the street's busy...people drive fast down that stretch and you have to pull out enough to see if they're coming but not too far where you might get hit...) and then proceeded to explain how i turned right into the left lane and how that is called a "wide right turn" which i guess, since he pointed it out, should be avoided? but i honestly don't remember that in driver's ed, which i admit was awhile back, but since there was NO ONE ELSE ON THE ROAD i just don't see why it was relevant. so then he let me go.

now, i was pretty ticked at this guy. i mean seriously, aren't there CRIMINALS or something he could spend his time pursuing? i was going fast, sure. but he doesn't know how fast...he was driving (on a MOTORCYCLE if we want to consider danger), not clocking my speed. and those other things he took the time to mention...seriously? i mean, seriously? maybe it ticked me off because he sounded like my husband listing shit that doesn't matter but proving that he, too, can come up with a list. maybe it was just that i KNEW he was not going to give me a ticket because really, there was nothing he could ticket. maybe it was just his manner during the whole thing. i was also ticked because my fifteen year old was watching the whole thing and i just knew i wouldn't be able to handle it, afterward, with the grace i wanted to be able to handle it with. i mean, my baby was crying the whole time the guy was lecturing me. and he made us late to boot.

sigh. i will talk to my teen tomorrow. i will explain that i will slow down on that stretch of crappy road. i will explain that while i drive that road multiple times a week (sometimes multiple times a day), that the officer was right in telling me to slow down (but i admit i will also probably tell him the rest of the stuff was fluff). i will also mention to my teen that perhaps if he'd get ready when i tell him to, we won't run five minutes late. but then i guess it's better he tell his guitar teacher we ran late because he wouldn't get his crap together rather than because his mom got pulled over.

and life goes on...
peace

so like it's already march?

how did february fly by so quickly? oh yeah, i was busy as hell...

and i'm still busy as hell. i did manage a vacation with my family to visit some friends...and that was really nice. lots of snow. life just feels cleaner when everything's white...well, for someone who lives where it rarely snows it does. and i've had to hit the ground running now that i'm home. so. much. to. do.

but i wanted to check in and remind myself that i have a blog. (although i need to admit that these days i still get in the car and count my children just to be sure i haven't forgotten anyone, so remembering i have a blog is kind of low on the priorities...but it's still good to visit...wish someone would come post some cool stuff here...)

peace

hey, i'm doing it again

blogging, that is...

when i blog regularly, it's just like anything else i do regularly...it just becomes something i do, i do it, and i keep going. and i feel good about it. (i feel the same way about running, btw...and am finding it just as difficult to get back into the swing of running as well.) and i am having such a hard time returning to regular blogging. part of me wonders why i care. i mean, i "see" somewhere on the internet or in person most of the folks who read this blog. but there is something about words for me. they help me process the world. and i get a little backed up. and when i avoid dealing with my verbal/processing constipation, well, we all know that shit needs somewhere to go, right? and like i mentioned in my last post, i think not blogging leads to much mindfucking, which then leads to worry, and then that energy still has to go somewhere and i assume it just swirls around in me, eventually leading to ulcers or cancer or my hair falling out at least...and then the sadness over those things will just jump into the fray of energy already swirling around and i'll probably just die. i mean, i don't mean to be morbid, but let's just get this out, 'k?

i admit i was going for a little shock value in my last post. mostly because i walked around in a state of shock for most of january. never really knowing what was coming next...and for awhile there, let's be honest, it just. kept. coming. but that is life. and it is also life to just sit and see how everything will settle...get used to the "new normal". (i can't explain it...i understand the phrase "new normal"....yet there is still something i hate about it...just sayin')

anyway....i was thinking about january, reflecting on everyone that was affected by it, everyone in the same position i am, waiting on that "new normal" bullshit, everyone who acted in ways that began the cascade that was january...i have so many questions i want to ask...so many things i want to say...things i'd like to hear. but i'm a little afraid of fucking it up worse. and while i usually feel that's kind of "egocentric with an inferiority complex" of me (thank you anne lamott for a diagnosis finally), right now i feel like it's just intelligence. if it feels logical to me that unchanneled energy can reek a little havoc and cause things i don't want, then it seems like channeled energy should be able to do really good things. but i think it takes time to channel energy...and i think it takes time for the good things that need to be done to be revealed sometimes. so, again, as anne lamott says, i'm just waiting for my next operating instructions. and in the meantime, i'm going to be grateful for opportunities to blog, try to find opportunities to run, and keep my therapist in business, i'm sure.

peace

hey hey

it's so weird to blog. only because i think about blogging a lot. i compose them in my head...while i fall asleep...while i nurse the baby...while i drive. but then i never seem to find the time to actually do it. and then i stay away because i'm afraid that once i actually pull up my blog and click on "new post"...it'll just lead to this verbal vomitting of things...so many damned things...that i need to get off my chest and send that energy out in the world to grow trees or something more useful than swirling around inside of me causing ulcers or something.

i am so glad january's over...

in january i...

learned my father's brother was hocking all of my grandmother's things (along with his daughter) to support a drug habit.

learned my stepfather has prostate cancer but doesn't want anyone to know anything about it.

learned that one of my niece's let one of her aunties and uncles know that she felt they were selfish people and terrible parents.

learned that my stepmother's brother hung himself.

and that was my january. so good fucking riddance to january, i say.

but...because i am who i am...i have to say that in january i also...

saw my father reach out to his brother and take care of his mother in a way i know he probably had long wanted to, but felt out of place to do.

showed up for my stepfather and mother (and grandfather and stepgrandmother) and it just felt good.

let my sil (beforementioned auntie) know that i love her and feel for her and totally support her, and that seemed to mean a lot to her, so i'm glad i took the time to do it.

was able to spend a number of days with my stepmother and father and sister and brothers with my youngest...and although it was very raw, i am again glad i showed up.

so the lesson of january? show up. unless you can't...and then that's okay too. but make the choice each time...think about it and go with what you got.

so now it is february. and i had a birthday. and i got soooo many wonderful, fabulous, amazing birthday wishes, texts, songs, cards. i don't know where i found all these wonderful, fabulous, amazing people...or maybe they found me?...at any rate, they are the gift i have always wanted and will never know how to repay or say thanks enough for. and that is the lesson of february.

peace out

ps--just wanted to clarify...my father's brother, along with his daughter, were hocking my grandmother's things...his brother wasn't hocking my grandmother's things along with his daughter...that sentence was a little clumsy, eh? the parentheses fucked it all up...but it was clear in my head, i just wanted to say...