Ribbons of Pride

I have been running through the pics that are filed on our computer this past month. I had a scare back in October when I tried to move the picture files from the C drive to the D drive in order to free up some C drive space when I thought in a moment of panic that I had lost THEM ALL.

Which reminded me in an awful hurry that I am a lot behind on my scrap booking these days. I have made an album a year for each of my four children until they finished Kindergarten, at which point I had planned to move them into their school times album, meaning ONE album for Grade One through Twelve. It was an effort I made to save my sanity. Three of the kids have a complete set of their first six years albums and Ruby has three albums (you know, because she is three). I give myself a little pat on the back at this point for keeping everyone up to date and all things being equal. BUT, I kinda never started the School Times Albums. I have them. And for Aidan I even have pictures for Grade One. But after that, it sort of fell apart on me and there the photos sit on my computer just waiting for that day when I will decide to ditch the whole thing or actually get it together enough to make an album.

Today I sorted pictures for Aidan and Zoe to the end of 2009. I will order them, I will get them in the albums lickedy split. I will. I will. I promise myself (but not them, cause breaking my promises to myself disappoints only me but breaking promises to my kids, ouch, breaks my heart).

In the sorting process I came across this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this:


There were probably a hundred such pictures of Aidan with Ruby, or Audrey, or Rachel in his arms and another hundred with his arms around Zoe or Avery. Unprompted. So seriously? I have developed real envy for my daughters who have a big brother that adores them so openly. But it's the good kind of envy, because it's laced with a ribbon of pride.

November

A month of cheesy looking mustaches. I am assured that these men are raising money for a cause but jeez what has looking like a 70s porn star got to do with prostate cancer? Fortunately, with a husband in sales I have not had to kiss one of those mustache toting men.

A month of novel writing frenzy. I have gone past the half way point. I am well into the 30000s of words in a very large word document. I am tempted to ditch it. My characters are making me crazy. Some of them just won't come out to play and I'm not getting to know them at all and some of them are just plain annoying. I am tempted to kill them all off. And then I read somewhere, recently that they are all autobiographical. Now I can't kill them and despising them only makes me despise myself. Will I find my way through this dismal mess? Only twelve more days to find out.

A month of daily blog posts. Opps. Clearly, I've fallen off the wagon. I was late to the party anyway, never quite committed. Finally derailed by sickness that JUST WON'T GO AWAY.

A month that brought with it unbearable cold. Which is sad since it will only get worse and for the NEXT SIX MONTHS (yes, that's my yelling voice). I am proud to be Canadian, even with all it's faults I feel lucky to have been born and raised in this beautiful land. But I could use a little of that global warming here and now.

I'm kind of ready for December. Making merry and all that jazz. Won't it be lovely. Plus in December the days start getting longer again and I can fool myself into believing that winter is not so bad. Wish me luck both with the writing and with the winter delusions.

Home

Snow

Cold

Cozy

Warm

Ours

Home





Another Six Word Fridays from Melissa at Making Things Up

Outside In

Sitting quietly in the ballet school. My beautiful perfect ballerina is preparing for a Christmas performance. The other mothers avoid my expressionless face. Their loud conversations fill the spaces in the common area, and in the hallways. They discuss trivial details of birthday parties, household activities, family gatherings. They tell their stories loudly and with great expression. They seem happy but I think some of them are not.


The ballerinas talk to me. The ask me questions about my knitting projects. They tell me stories about Ruby who calls them all her friends. They are social in a gentle curious way, not yet entirely broken into bragging and forces smiles. They giggle with each other. They hold hands. They talk about music and school and quizzes. Some of them study. My heart breaks knowing how quickly this time will pass for them. How soon they will become guarded in their stories. How careful they might become lest they be judged.


I feel fake. Like I don't belong here with the other mothers. I feel too young and also too old. My loneliness in a group is not uncommon, I tell myself again and again. And yet it must be palpable, are they avoiding me, or am I avoiding them?

Meet Annette

Today I am cheating. I am busy with things for my cutey niece's second birthday party. So instead of reading me, you should pop over and read my friend, Annette's blog. She is in Kenya on an unpaid mission. She has taken a six month leave of absence from our work to pursue this adventure. You might even learn a little about what I do (keeping in mind that Annette is doing the steroid version).

Happy Sunday!

Cold Tea

Motherhood has opened up new possibilities for me. I often drink my tea cold, especially if I try to drink it at a reasonable hour of the day. If I wait until the evenings after the children are tucked neatly into their beds, I may manage a warm cup of tea but it will have to be something decaffeinated or I will find myself in another state.

The house has fallen apart this past week. The floors are so dirty that it takes only minutes for that dusty film to accumulate on freshly washed feet. I have taken to wearing slippers which is appropriate anyway since I keep the house cool in an effort to save energy and money. The cool house was a good place for the fevered children to be this week. Three out of four of them falling ill with a stomach bug that my niece kindly brought us on the weekend. I have been mostly well except for a mildly upset stomach, there has been no fever and no tossing my cookies.

Speaking of which there have been a lot of cookies. Not actual cookies because that would require baking but gobs of Halloween candy hauled around by the little ones and the not so little ones last weekend. I have eaten more than my fair share. Especially since the kids have been sick and shown little interest in food including the much coveted treats.

I stand corrected about the state of my floors, there are some spots that are so clean you could eat off them should you so desire. A spot in the bathroom where Aidan tossed his cookies yesterday, a spot in the living room where my niece started this whole adventure, a spot in the hallway and two spots in my bedroom where Ruby has missed her puke bucket. If they keep it up the floors will be entirely clean by the middle of next week.

I have reached the 10,000 word mark in my effort to nanowrimo. That puts me exactly on schedule today. Considering that I didn't start the novel until the second day and I took the third and fourth day off for illness and work related activities (namely work), I'm feeling pretty confident that I can pull it off if I don't lose steam. I'm not holding out for this blog post a day thing, that just seems excessive. Go read Robin at Not Ever Still though. She weaves intricate stories of her family's lives that will have you just green with envy at her talent (oh wait, that's me).

Happy Saturday.

Welcome Here This Week

I won't change. I refuse change.
I dig in hard. Solidly sure.
I like my house, my job.
I like my perfect, beautiful kids.
My dearest, sweetest husband. No change.

And still, I change every day.
Evolution occurs around me in spades.
My children grow. My hands age.
A coworker adventures on another continent.
Friends have new babies, new pets.

We find ourselves meeting more people.
Interesting people, new friendships never ending.
New opportunities present themselves in moments,
unasked but never unwelcome. The possibilities!
Change follows us, a constant stalker.

One change I will welcome openly:
no more vomit, no more fevers.
Change is welcome here this week.

Now go visit Melissa over at Making Things Up and while you're there, thank her for this adventure we call Six Word Fridays.

More Hours For Everyone

I have this problem: there are simply not enough hours in the day. I am sure that three more hours a day would do it. Then I would have enough time to finish everything that needs to be finished and enough time for sleep, a good solid rest so that I could start the next day with my best self available. This would only work if the only person that got three extra hours was me.

The problem is: you have this problem too. Your day ends too soon, just as mine does. You feel that you couldn't finish everything that you wanted to accomplish in the given time either. And you want three more hours too. But if you get those three more hours, we will create a new problem: HIGHER EXPECTATIONS.

Because we are all getting through everything that needs to be done each day, someone will decide that they can do a little more and then the person beside them will follow suit and so on until we all have too many things to finish before the day is out even with those extra hours and then we will all need more extra hours.

So the solution is this. We need to lower our expectations. Not a lot. Just a little. Enough that we realize that we are human, that it is physically impossible to be in two places at once. That multi-tasking is not actually the most effective way to complete tasks to the best of our ability. To allow ourselves some room for failure which could potentially lead to personal growth. So join me in deciding that the anwser is to forgive ourselves, to let go of the too many things to do and find ways to do just a little less. But to make that little less count we will need to do it with all of our beings, to be solidly invested.

I'm sleeping today. I worked last night but was smart enough, for once, to schedule this post, just in case I don't get back to it later. I am trying, desparately trying to keep up with the nablopomo bloggers even though I missed the first day, chalk it up to being fashionably late. It's my style. Also, I didn't actually sign up, maybe next year, this year I'm just practicing keeping the pace. Also, I'm busy and may get distracted with nanowrimo.I'm going to write 50,000 words in my new novel this month, if it kills me. And for this I did sign up. Wish me luck. And a few extra hours each day.

Strawberry blond hair

My son, Aidan has grown his hair long. It's long enough now that we can put it in a low ponytail which he lets me do only when there is good reason, such as gymnastics. I hate his long hair. it looks always messy to me, a little greasy and a lot nest like. He's not fond of brushing it and he won't let me braid it. Huh. He knows I like it better short and he laughs at me when I suggest he might want to cut it.

But here's a little secret: I also love it. Love it like crazy. I love that Aidan is asserting his individuality. I love that he won't just do something to please me. I love that he loves it. And I love it's reddish blond colour and it's softness as he snuggles up against me. He does a pretty good job of keeping it clean now, though in the early days he had some problems rinsing out all of the soap.

He is often mistaken for a girl. When we are out anywhere, I will get comments about my four beautiful girls. He pipes up, "I'm a boy", and the startled and slightly taken back commenter will backtrack a little. I will suggest again that the solution is a simple haircut. But here is the really best part: he doesn't care. He has told me time and again that it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks, he knows who he is. And thus, he continues to refuse to cut his hair.

*SWOON* I am as in love today as I was ten years ago. More. And so proud of the beautiful person he is becoming. So while I like the way his short hair looks, I love the way his long hair makes him into his own person.

I can barely wait to know him through all the phases of his life.

Mindful Meditation

I had a long discussion with my sister a couple of nights ago. She is taking some interesting courses in conjunction with her Nursing Degree and the ability to live and observe mindfully as a day to day practice came up.

When I gave up prayer several years back, when I gave up God, it was the most frustrating thing to discover that while I didn't miss God, I missed the inner peace that was achieved through prayer. Out of need, I came up with a new practice which I call mindful meditation. And since my sister was so interested in it, I thought I would share it with you too.

Each night as my dear husband slips off to sleep I read. I read every night. Sometimes for three minutes, sometimes for two hours. The length of time spent reading is irrelevant. I call this the decompression phase of my meditation. It allows me to fully separate my mind from that which has occurred during the day. In the next phase I turn out the light, close my eyes, and briefly review the days events. In this process, I am mindful of how things made me feel, what my reaction was to any given situation. If I am unhappy with any of it, I touch briefly on how I could have controlled my reaction differently IN AN EMOTIONAL SENSE ONLY. I don't play the game of later thought up witty retorts, that tends to be counterproductive to what I am trying to achieve. I think only of how I could have changed my own approach, not how I could have elicited a different response. And then I slide into the truly meditative portion of my process in which I think of blankness. For me that starts with a not quite blank canvass: a field of sand, an ocean of blue, or even just a repetitive soothing sound, until my mind is blank. And from there I drift off to sleep.

Once upon a time I believed that I might be the only one who needed this system of decompression. That my overactive mind was unique. I have since recovered and let go of such narcissistic belief. We all have active minds, we all have different skills that lend themselves to coping and processing all of the information we receive in a day.

Share with me: what is your process?