New Post

It is time for a new post and I have several thoughts running through my head.  I am thinking it must be "Ranting Season," since most of my thoughts require me to get a soap box out to stand on, much like my sister's latest post.

But the root of my rantings is really the deep introspective thoughts I have been having.  I need some quiet time to process and dig deep into some of the thoughts I have been having.

So let me begin.

It all started when I went in the Principal's office to volunteer my help on something the school is working on. It is something I saw a need for and I decided to fill it.  So I am filling it and it took up a considerable amount of time last week and so I did not have a lot of time to do the usual things I have been doing lately and things like the house getting cleaned were set by the wayside as well (and you know, a house of order is a good place to lay your head).

On top of that I had Time Out for Women this week (which while awesome was a huge time commitment for me), Carter's first time marching with the band at a football game, feeding the Stake Presidency for Stake Conference this weekend, and the usual carpools and dinners and friends what not.

By Sunday I was shot and napped for 3 hours and woke up grumpy and mean, like a big old bear.

What was the cause of all this?  Why the big mean bear?  It was apparently so bad that I went to bed with a note from sweet Ethan promising me he would be better and try not to disappoint me anymore.

It was bad.

So here is what I have been thinking.  What am I to do?  Or to phrase the Time Out for Women theme, what am I to BECOME? Really and truly I think that conference just put the icing on the cake of some thoughts I was already having, since that was the theme, Choose to Become.  They had this opener with a video of women doing things, artists, authors, bloggers, bakers, all sorts of things.  And they were all succeeding at it like even as a career as well as being a mom, wife, mother, Daughter of God.

The first speaker challenged us to get out of our own way and have the faith to Become what the Lord wants us to be. A thousand thoughts ran through my head. "I should be a writer." "How awesome to be a speaker like this. I love to speak." "I should really be a teacher again."  "Ooooh maybe I should dust off my violin.  I could be good again." "Four years of Art in High school and all the painting I have done, I live in the most beautiful state.  I should paint and draw again. I was really good.  My kids don't even know I can do half this stuff."  And the list went on and on.

There was another speaker who I had never heard of before.  He spoke about the problem with conforming.  He challenged us to look at 2 things, first, what are we conforming too. And second, how are we forcing others to conform to us. He also said that there are only 2 choices we have to make: What you believe and values and how you act on those beliefs and values. The rest of the stuff is just consequences.

That was deep.  I know my values and beliefs. I made that choice, but how do my actions stand up?  Good food for thought. But what really got me was his first question: what have I conformed to. And I tell you, the answer hit me like a ton of bricks:  Volunteering at the school.  That is what I get sucked in to every time.  I don't know why, but I do.

So the next step is to change that.  Well, that is easier said then done, since I did make some commitments and I will follow them through. I will also recommit to my old mantra of Choose Your Own Halloween Candy.

What?  Well you see, my sister in law, EmRee, is a marriage and family therapist and a former teacher at BYU education week (which is a big deal if you know anything about that. Not that she would say it was a big deal, so I say it for her). I first heard that phrase, choose your own Halloween candy from her at a workshop she taught at Education Week.  I don't remember where she got it, but I adopted as my own person guideline for choosing things to get involved in.  Think back to when you are choosing which Halloween candy you are going to hand out.  Do you choose something you don't like? No.  You usually choose something that you are going to enjoy having the leftovers around. The same thing should go with how and what we get involved in. Do I want the leftovers that extracurricular activities bring into my life when they are around? No. Therefore when my commitments are fulfilled, I will scale back my conforming to volunteering and in the mean time, I will no longer conform to anything else.

Now some people will say, well someone needs to do it. Or, like I say to myself, if you don't do it, who will.  To that I say, if you can't get anyone to do it, maybe we don't need it.

Do I know what I am to Become yet?  No.  Not yet.  I have a few inklings though, like maybe I should Become a good friend, a good listener, a good mom, a good person. Because as awesome as Time Out for Women was, this year's theme didn't exactly celebrate the "ordinary" ways we can Become something.  We don't all have to be writers, painters, singers, bloggers with 10,000 hits a day, or musicians to be what the Lord wants us to be.  I think that message got a little lost.  I think if we all Become more Christ like and more charitable, and more patient and kind, then we will have succeeded in this life.

For now I am going to work on that.

because it's wierd

Do any of you have dreams about old boyfriends?  I do.  Not like dreams that I mean to have, but dreams when I am asleep.  Sometimes the dreams take place back in the day we were going out, sometimes they are present tense but without the relevant players (ie. husband and children) in my current life.

Last night I had one where I met up with an old beau after both of us had lost our respective spouses and all our children were apparently grown because we talked about them. But we looked like we do now... we weren't all old and wrinkly... In my dream we ended up dating and I think even talked about getting married because we wondered what our kids would think.

It was weird.

Then I have this recurring dream about a guy that I went out with that is always the same theme, but different situations.  The theme is we get a second chance and it always takes place like Back In the Day....We are younger and there are no husband, and no children as players in this dream.  One time in the dream we were at a race, like a car race. Another time we were at a restaraunt.  Same thing happens, we meet, we talk about why and how it ended, we make out and I wake up. Oh and it is always the same guy but he's a different one from lasts night dream. They leave me a little nostalgic for the what if...  What if it had worked out between me and him....and maybe a little longing for the single life and the thrill of dating.

Weird, again.

Anyway, I was just wondering if any of you, my half dozen readers, have this happen.  What do you think it means.  I think it means I need to spend more time with JaDee.  I have dreams with him in them too, although never in the same dream as with an old flame.  My dreams with JaDee in them are always super romantic and totally not at all like real life in their setting or situation (ie. we are on a secluded beach or alone at dinner, or one time we were floating down a river headed for a waterfall and he was figuring out how to save me...real damsel in distress kind of a thing).

One of the things these dreams make me think about, especially the recurring one where I end up with a second chance with the other guy, is how different my life would be if I had made different choices, or took different opportunities.  It is amazing to me how life works out.  How maybe there are pivotal moments in  our lives where we make a choice that we don't even realize is monumental in shaping our life until after several years have passed.

One time in real life, I was with yet another guy, who actually never shows up in my dreams, when I really did something that I can pinpoint exactly when my life took a turn.  He was a guy that I dated at BYU, freshman year.  He was just off his mission that Christmas and he was in my ward. He was so cute and we were in a couple of classes together. We had the same major and the same plans to go into law.  I had quite the crush on him and I can look back now and see that he was probably pretty interested in me too.  He happened to be down at breakfast almost every morning before I went to work.  (we lived at DT and my ward was full of all the Returned Missionaries that stayed in the dorms when they came home mid year) Or I would just happen to run into him on the way home from my late math class every Tuesday and Thursday.  I look back on that now and I think he knew where I was going to be...

Anyway, we dated a bit, but the turning point was the night I borrowed my friends car so we could go somewhere.... It was a stick shift and I was not that great with it.  I did fine by myself but I was with a guy I liked and it made me nervous and I stalled in the middle of a big intersection in Orem.

I said a bad word.

We didn't date anymore after that.  I stopped seeing him at breakfast and my walks home from math were solo after that.

That four letter word changed my life.  I really think I would have ended up with him...but he isn't the one I get a second chance with in my dreams... And I actually do wonder (not wonder in a wishful way, but wonder in a curious way) where I would have ended up with him.

Hell if I scared him off with one little swear word I have a feeling I would have not ended up happy.

Although, I know I laugh at physically, where I am today...Hello! Alaskan housewife is a far cry from the law career in D.C. I originally had planned.  And for that matter the person I was 15 years ago would never have been out shopping garage sales for thigh high fishing waders and a chainsaw like I was last week.

Its just funny where life takes us.

Maybe my dreams are showing me not all that I might have missed out on, but how much I have.

A response to Kolbi

First: the chandelier came from Restoration Hardware... 

My cousin Kolbi, wrote a post about being prepared for motherhood.  It was really good.  But when I started writing a comment to her it turned into an essay.  I thought I would expand on that comment here in my own blog...

As a stay at home mom who never wanted to be one, I have been at this now for 14 years.  That is almost half my life really, when you think about it.  Oh the first 7 years were really really hard.  I thought I would go crazy with nothing to do but kids and mess after mess after mess.  I hated it more than I loved it for sure.  Like really hated it and got angry that this is what life dealt me.  That this is what I chose and quite frankly I would like what was behind door number 2 or 3 or 4...

Then something clicked. I think it was school.

I cried sending Carter off to Kindergarten. I figured he would love his teacher as much or more than me and was insanely jealous of her sharing that pedestal with me.  And  he did put her up there with me, but as I got him on and off the bus every day I saw so much change in him.  I loved that he was coming home with new ideas he was testing and new independence and confidence he was building.  And by Christmas of that year my baby Carter was gone.  Completely gone.  Instead I had little boy Carter who would never be the same and continues in never being the same.  They grow and change so fast.

While I missed and still sometimes do miss going to work and feeling fulfilled and feeling like I am contributing to society/the world/whatever, I have also learned that I don't multitask well.  I have 3 different to do lists for each child already in my head. Sometimes those lists coincide (like dinner for all 3 usually is the same thing) but mostly each has different needs/wants/demands that need met each day. There is 3 different sets of homework, and after school activities, and campouts for scouts, and talks at church, and shoes that don't fit and dolls that need fixed and rooms that need painted and TV shows that need monitoring and video games and chores and all at different levels and constantly running through my head! Combine that with my own obligations to my church calling, my extended family (it takes a bit of work to keep in touch with everyone but that is a post for another day), and a list of things I want to do that I try to squeeze in. Oh and I do have a husband who is amazing at helping with all the daily mechanics of things (he is a whiz at dishes and folding laundry) but he has his own schedule and needs (no not always those kinds, but even that is still on the TO DO LIST!).

Can I even think of working and adding yet another list to bounce around this brain of mine?

When the kids go to school I am so glad that I am home when they are sick. I am so glad JaDee and I do not have to have the "whose work is more important not to miss" exchange when someone wakes up with a fever. I am so glad I volunteered at the school not because I liked listening to 25 kindergartners read the same story to me over and over again (MIND NUMBING) but because it gave me leverage with the principal when I needed to get my kids into the good teacher's classroom, or to get the teacher to meet the needs of my kid when I actually see what is going on in her classroom.  Because nothing brings out momma bear in me more than a crappy teacher or a crappy situation at school and I like to know what is going on with my kids for 6 hours a day.  Plus I go on field trips and get to know the friends and the friends' moms too (again, I can think of a thousand different ways I would rather spend my days most of the time, who really wants to go dissect cow eyes).

(I recently found an ally in one of Carter's friend's mom who agrees with me that Xbox live is nothing we need in our home.  This was while the 5-6 boys he hangs out with at school were sharing with us some of the funny things that have happened while talking to strangers on-line in these games and one of the boys admitted to being propositioned by a man who claimed to only be dressed in butter).

So glad I went on that field trip!

It is a huge amount of work to stay home. I know Kolbi did not even begin to hint that staying at home was not work, and I know she knows I end every day as exhausted as she does, but all in all I am glad I chose to stay home.  I am glad I chose to put the bulk of my effort into my own family.  With any job there is crap to put up with.  It may be a co-worker or a project or a boss. But at least I can say at the end of the day, I actually LOVE the people I work for.  I may not always love what I do, but I love who they are and I like to think that my efforts are what they need to be better people.

A recent exchange with one of my boys has lead to them being more and more aware of what it takes to raise them and as a result, they are ever more grateful too.

"What!  I didn't get a Slurpee!  How come she gets a Slurpee and I don't" You would have thought I took Olivia to Disney World without them the way they carried on.

"Well," I answer slowly.  "Olivia got to come with me to Costco for 2 hours to buy groceries, since we were completely out. Then waited in line with me at the post office while I picked up a package that happened to be the boots I had to order you. Then we washed the car since it was filthy and you were yelling about how the road slime got on your church pants, which we washed by the way and have them hanging in your room.  And before we came to pick you up from school, I saw I was out of gas and Olivia never got lunch, so we went in and got a granola bar and a Slurpee before picking you up. I think she deserves a Slurpee."

"Oh." Is all they can say.  And ever since that exchange, and a few others like it, I get great big hugs from the boys who tell me thanks for coming to get them when they are sick. Thanks for this delicious dinner (tuna fish casserole?? who knew they were so easy to please?). Thanks for buying my science fair plants (that is on today's list) while I am at school because I have a campout tonight.

Those thanks are cool.

So in the end, the mindless days of Elmo, and figuring out what the heck I am going to do with this toddler until dad comes home, and being a nap-Nazi just so I can hear my own thoughts for 60 minutes, have paid off.  I have worked hard and I still work hard and there is always more work to be done.

And I will be here to do it.

So I am a flake

After all this talk about going private I am taking it back. I will leave this blog open to the masses.

But let me tell you what prompted this whole thing.

I had a friend from High School who was very attentive, I guess you could say, on Facebook.  He would ALWAYS comment on EVERYTHING I posted there.  All my pictures got comments of how beautiful I was.  Well he made a video of his friends (set to the them movie of "Friends" [I'll be there for you] and everything).  I was tagged in it.  It was a slide show of his friends but my picture was lifted off my facebook account.  Also, the only friends featured in the video were women.

It kind of creeped me out.  JaDee said that was enough and I unfriended him and blocked him.  Well, then a few weeks later I get a message from someone i don't know (which has happened once or twice trying to track down relatives and whatnot).  This unknown person was the guy I blocked trying to reach me through a second profile!  He wanted to know why I blocked him on FB, so I told him, and then changed my privacy settings to no longer get messages from everyone.

Then I heard about a cousin of JaDee's who has a real live stalker on her hands.  Like someone from her missionary days spent years harassing her and even traveling 2500 miles to see her in her workplace.  Creepy huh.  Although it has finally been several years with no contact from this person, she still keeps her blog private.

I started worrying about how well do I really know anyone I graduated from High School with?  Or do I have someone in my class a little like the guy from Happy Gilmore with a note on yellow lined paper tacked to a wall with the title "People to Kill," hanging in his/her room.  In a moment of panic, I decided to be safe and shore up my defenses.

But after reading some comments, talking to JaDee, and a couple of friends, I think I am probably fine.  Public blogs are so easy to follow.  I know I would lose a lot of my friends that I know check in with me. Some of you even like what I write and I love to write so this is good practice for me. I have deleted most of my crazy followers from Indonesia and Southeast Asia.  The person in question has never left a comment on here and although a simple google search of me would find me here,  I feel OK about staying up here.

And I could be totally weirding out about a nice person was nice to me on facebook too.

So I will stay up and running.

Thanks you guys!

new family motto

When we had our third child and all he** broke lose, we prepared ourselves for our first 8 hour drive to the Wyoming farm from our house in Utah.  We knew with 3 kids, one of them a newborn, it might take longer than the allotted 8 hour time.  So JaDee and I adopted a new family motto for all family trips:

Low Expectations.

This little phrase has saved us from countless episodes of useless frustration.  For instance, Low Expectations allows you to not get mad when you drive 500 miles and your kid pukes every 50.  Low expectations lets you be happy when you have pulled out of the parking lot of the gas station only to hear "I have to go potty," 10 minutes down the road.  Low expectations insures you aren't disappointed when you spend money on a dinosaur museum and your kid cries when the sound effects blast through the room. 

Lately, however we have felt the need to change the motto to

Just below Par

This is in reference to Carter's grades.  Oh that boy.  Much like with Ethan getting his tongue stuck, Carter has not learned to turn assignments in on time, or at all.  We dig through his backpack and find all the "0s" just sitting there!!!  After riding him hard all this second quarter he has an A in English, his worst subject.  Only to get the email today that he did not turn in a "Bookmark" assignment. 

Oh and this bookmark has been talked about all week.  It has been in the back pack since last Monday when we missed school for the ice storms.  It was a hand drawn , well, bookmark. 

So that A now has been defeated by the 0.  And it wasn't like he failed vocabulary or didn't get an essay done, he forgot. to. turn. in. a. bookmark.


ARRGHHHH!!!!

How you know

One summer, a few years ago, Sherie and I were at the Perry 4th of July Softball tournament.  I am sure we went for the Perry Ice snow cones more than the actual game, but while I was there I had a revelation.

Olivia was about 20 months old.   I had left her home with JaDee and the boys to go with Sherie to the snow cone..er.. Softball tournament.   Much of the rest of the town was there and Sherie ran into someone she knew who was showing off the latest grand baby.  The baby was tiny, just brand new and congratulations were passed along and we headed up to our seats in the bleachers to gossip...I mean watch the great Softball Tournament.

The new grandma took her latest bundle of joy down to the seats several rows in front of us.  I leaned over to Sherie and said, "You know, when I see a cute little baby like that, and they are all tiny, and scrunched up and sweet, it makes me want-----TO VOMIT!"

That was how I knew I was done having babies.

Further confirmations came to me when Olivia was 3 and my friend Ranae had a baby.  She delivered in the same hospital I did and as I was buzzed into the maternity ward I seriously almost turned around and left.  I came this close (imagine me holding my fingers a mere half inch apart) to leaving my gift at the nurses station and bolting for my life. I was having nightmares of being back in the same hall recovering from an eventless, easy birth.  I knew again I was done.

I rarely hold anyone else's babies unless I am related to them.  And since I live in Alaska I don't get to do that very often.  In short, I know I am done.

Then on Sunday a couple came to church with their new twins.  In Sunday School they both started to squirm and fuss in their carriers and I had a familiar pang in my heart.  As the twins' mother reached down to cuddle one close, I could feel the comfort that the baby settled into as her arms cradled him.  I wistfully and even longingly remembered when that was my job too.

But Olivia is almost 5!  There is no way I am "baby hungry." In fact there are some very permanent reasons for me not to be baby hungry.  Permanent solutions we prayed about and are positive were the right thing for me, my health and our family. Why am I feeling the NEED to grab a baby?

Here is what I came up with as the answer to that question.  I may not want another baby, but I love being a mother.  And with bigger kids the ways to envelop my children in the comfort and safety of me have changed.  I no longer cradle them in a fuzzy blanket and feel their heartbeat and smell their smell.  I laugh at jokes, make special trips to video game stores, and help with homework.  I encourage talents, discourage bad feelings, and run out for secret treats at the gas station.  I come to games, watch plays, drive to early morning band and teach home pre-school.

It isn't as easy as it once was to provide this comfort. There are bullies and bad words and innocence lost (Ethan recently learned where babies came out of.   He thought they came from your belly button.  Oh and it was Olivia who told him the truth) and tears over bad grades and hard work and tough choices.  I can't make it all better by simply pulling them onto my lap and brushing my lips on their forehead anymore.

I was missing that simple time I had with my babies. That time when the world seemed to stop while I breathed in my baby's smell and marveled at that little mouth in the biggest of yawns.  I was so happy for the new mom that she got to be the comfort for her own babies and thankful for the divine responsibility I have to my own.

Even though its different now, it is essentially the same.

Divine

Last night I watched a movie of a book I love:  Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel by Rebbecca Wells.  The movie is a poor substitute, but the premise is basically the same.  A grown daughter wrestling with the demons of her mother.  A mother who had demons of her own and did a sometimes horrible job raising her children.  But the mother also did a sometimes fabulous job too.

I love this book because I totally see myself in the mother.  Not to the extreme the book portrays, but at times I feel down right wretched about this whole "housewife" thing.  I feel like I could go off my rocker and check out for days.  I feel like it but I don't.

But what I get from this book, what gives me hope, is the fact that it works out in the end. I love the beautiful parts of the book.  Like the mom waking them up on their birthdays in bed with a cake.  How she gets her daughter a ride on an elephant (in the movie it is an airplane) after the exhibit has closed.  How she really loves them with her heart and soul.  Those are the moments that are good. Those are the moments that matter and sustain me and hopefully my kids.

Dinner might be hot dogs 2 nights in a row, or Ramen like it was every Tuesday during school what with piano and Cub/Boy Scouts on the same night.  The laundry is literally scattered all over the upstairs in various states of done-ness.  I have dishes from last night in the sink.  These are the things that get me down.  I beat myself up for not keeping a "clean" house.  I worry about what to bring to our ward's Fish Fry tonight, since all I really want to do is show up and eat what everyone else brought.

I think about all of this as I fill up a pool in the yard for 3 little girls (it did get to 67 today and not a cloud in the sky, so of course we must break out the swimsuits that we bought back in May in hopes of warm days this summer).  And since it is only 67 I brought buckets of hot water to help warm it up.  Seems a little oxymoronic to warm up the water we need in the pool to supposedly cool off, doesn't it?

Buckets later, and the decision to just bring Rhodes Dough cinnamon rolls, the girls are upstairs changing out of swimsuits and borrowing Olivia's clothes to get warm. Puddles are leaving a steady trail from the sliding glass door, through the living room and up the stairs.  Who knows what they will find to put on in the clean basket of semi-folded laundry in her room.  They may all end up in princess dress-ups.

I will look at Olivia tonight when she sleeps (that battle that starts at 9 and ends at 11:30 when the sun goes down).  I will hope that today was a magical day for her.  That these are the kind of things that my kids will remember when they need to get through my moments of ranting, my maniacal cleaning spells, my roars of chore orders and cries of ingratitude when no one likes dinner.

I hope it is the days like today that are enough.

this was not in the job description...

Last night I woke up around 3 AM.  I had to use the facilities and in the process woke up enough to know that I was not going back to sleep anytime soon.  So I did what I always do when this happens; I went to the TV room and set down to curl up to PBS.

I reached over to grab my electric throw, like I always do, when something huge sloshed (yes, sloshed) out of the basket and plopped onto the floor.  What the heck was that!

It was a giant Pyrex bowl of yogurt. Like I mean, the biggest one in that pack of 3 we all got for wedding presents and it was in fact, FULL of warm yogurt.

Of course it was.

See JaDee has had this ongoing quest to make homemade yogurt.  He has tried this several times in our married life.  All have failed.  This latest attempt involved wrapping the bowl in my electric blanket on the Medium setting for a few hours.  Not anticipating that his snoring and my peeing would interrupt his yogurt making process.

Fortunately for him, the bowl was tightly wrapped in Saran Wrap (maybe I should pitch this idea to them as a commercial: you know the common household scene where you wake up in the night and overturn a bowl of yogurt cooking in your electric blanket, but certain mess was saved by the SARAN WRAP!).

I laughed and then thought of a few of the other ridiculous things I have done lately.

First: I vacuumed my back lawn.  Olivia took bucket after bucket of sand the other day out of her sandbox and dumped it at the bottom of our back steps (yes our snow has melted and we can see it again.  Can't see the bush in the front yard yet, there is one stubborn pile hanging on, but the turtle sandbox has emerged). Even after we shoveled most of it back to the sandbox we kept tracking sand in the house.  So I took out the shop vac and vacuumed the grass.

Second, I scooped up 3 huge piles of moose poop from our yard.  I know most of you have never done that, therefore it is ridiculous to think that I, at anytime in my life, ever envisioned myself doing it either.

Third, I started shoveling the snow off my lawn and into the street.  Isn't it usually the other way around? I really want to see that stuff all melted, and when I saw my neighbor do it I thought I too, would help mother nature along.

What have you done lately?

Martha called...

Lately I have been feeling crafty.

I am in a frantic hunt for a sewing machine too...any suggestions??

I get together with a few friends every week for what we call Project Day. We each bring something to one of our homes that we are working on and we work. Sometimes we sew, knit, scrapbook, whatever the project we happen to be working on. Not only does it carve out time for us to get something besides laundry done, we have fun too.

One of the women I work with is the YW president in our ward. She was saying how there has been an effort to get away from CRAFTS in YW and in Relief Society and there has been for quite a while. The conversation continued with us agreeing that often times teaching a craft also teaches a skill. We decided that it was crafting with a purpose. Everything I do I could define as CRAFTY. From my peg board organizing system above my computer, to the bows I glue together for Olivia's hair.

I CRAFT sometimes out of necessity to get what I want when I can't/won't buy it.

But sometimes I CRAFT because I like it.

I spent the rest of week pondering the word CRAFT.

We say it like it is a bad word. We call each other "crafty" and "Martha" and not always is this meant endearingly, although it is the real name of Big Fat Kitty. We think of CRAFTS as being badly spray painted necklaces of macaroni our kids bring home from first grade. We think of crayon green Christmas wreaths and Santa's made out of cotton balls hung on our refrigerators. We think of macrame plant hangers and bright yellow flowers glued to a Styrofoam ball in our grandmothers' houses and cringe.

These are the images of CRAFTS.

But in my mind it is different. I got to thinking about what it is I like about doing crafts and other domestic things. And another word came to my mind.

EDIFY.

I love this word. It is a word that describes the feeling when something speaks to my soul. It is a word I became aware of as a youth in a lesson/fireside/or talk where the speaker was guiding us to choose music that edified our spirits.

But as I was cutting fabric with a rotary cutter on a self healing mat I realized that I was feeling edified.

What? I was doing crafts? How is that edifying?

I don't know. But I recognized my soul was singing as I lined up the selection of fabrics to the 10 and a half mark on my cutting mat and sliced through the fibers. I relished in the textures. I drank up the colors and devoured the patterns of each piece I cut.

(Ethan has this same soul singing quality too. In his note thanking the owner of our local quilt store for helping his class with their quilt, Ethan told her that he loved her shop; especially the Jelly Rolls. And he wasn't talking pastries either)!

So my thoughts went back to the earlier conversation of steering our women's activities away from crafts and the bad connotations "crafts" seem to invite. And I realized that teaching "crafts" teaches us important skills and may introduce us into something we truly love. I recognize that it does not have to be everything we do or teach. I recognize that it may not appeal to everyone. But what I include in CRAFTS may reach a broad spectrum.

Sewing, furniture refinishing, gluing, cutting, spackling, crackling, painting, knitting, pottery, ceramics, weaving, quilting, arranging, hammering, sawing, hanging, tying, drawing, decorating (cakes or other things), scrapping, tacking, imagining, welding, glass blowing, beading, bending, taping, scraping, matching, tiling, vinyling, decoupaging, HTML-ing. Whatever your thing is...

Embrace your inner Martha!

ads

I just opened Olivia's baackpack from pre-school and unloaded a treat from one of her classmates. i saw a Mounds bar sticking out and knowing she would never eat it, I opened the goody bag and instead of a tasty treat I grabbed this:

Want to have mounds of fun!

Be a smartie (also in the treat bag)

and host a Pampered Chef party with _________________.

Hmmmm, I thought. Soliciting via pre-school treats. Maybe a bit tacky?

I also love a certain blog whom many people love as well. Many creative people who have businesses. And they send her many things because they love her, but maybe with a small hope that she will love them too? Enough to feature the gift in a blog post like this one. Thus sending a lot of traffic their way? Is it a genuine gift?

So the dilemma in my mind is how tacky / appropriate is it to ad-gift? Whether at pre-school, the blog world, neighbor gifts this Christmas? Is it OK to send someone a gift with the ad for your business included and maybe the small expectation attached with it?

Luxury?

When I think of the word "luxury" I think of thick fur coats. A yacht. Maybe silverware that matched and cups without lids. Closets with enough space that my sheets fit like they do when Martha shows me how to fold them. Not jammed in there with the washcloths, place mats and a humidifier.

I don't think of being a stay at home mom as a luxury.

I heard this comment from a woman on the news who was returning to work as an attorney. She stayed at home for 11 years and now has 2 children in college and 2 still at home. She said in these economic times she was giving up some luxuries and that staying home was the one that had to go. I don't fault her for her returning to work. It is something I would like to do as well. And with 2 in college and 2 more to put through I certainly see where it would be a need. What I have been pondering is the term "luxury" in reference to staying at home.

And if it is not a luxury then what is it?

Luck? Priority? Need?

After mulling this word over in my mouth and heart i decided Need was it. Especially after the appearance of Stephanie Nielsen on Oprah this week. Find someone with DVR who has it and watch it. (I just found this link to Stephanie's lesson on being a mom from Oprah.)

Because besides being a plane crash victim who's life was changed forever in an instant, she is a stay at home mom and what gets her through the day is the stay at home stuff.

So I have been pondering my own stay at home stuff. And ultimately my needs.

I need to stay at home to get Carter to Jazz Band in the morning, the lunches made, a family prayer said and occasionally a scripture read. I need to wake Olivia up to smell her sweet baby smell that still lingers for those few seconds in the mornings from her warm bed. I need to laugh at Ethan as he comes downstairs with yet another outfit that he insists matches. And I need to send him back up to try again.

I need to be home when Olivia asks me to tape toilet paper on her bum to be a tail because she is a puppy. I need to snuggle with her and the cat as she tries to dress us both in dish towels as our long princess hair. I need to eat the play dough cookies and get out the paint shirt and brushes and tape up the masterpieces on the kitchen wall for Dad to see.

I need this.

To not have this would kill me. To not give my all to these kids would kill me. (not the house, mind you...I have UNO cards trailing down the stairs, laundry in every room in various stages of "done-ness" and no dinner in the oven...oh and strips of toilet paper from unsuccessful tail attachment all over the house. But no crumbs on the floor- I have a dog!)

what to write...

It has been a pretty slow week. And I am sure to get chastised by my sister for not updating the blog, so while taking boys to school this morning I racked my brain for a suitable topic.

And came up with the following:

A short dissertation on the Monroe Doctrine and how our Judicial system would have benefited from staying this course instead of looking to international law as an influence in Supreme Court cases (can you tell I am reading a book about the 11 years our Court went unchanged [1994-2005 our country did not get any new Justices on the Supreme Court, the longest unchanged bench in the history] and the 9 justices who made up that Court...Rehnquist, Scalia, O'Connor, Kennedy, Breyer, Thomas, Ginsbreg, Souter and Stevens).

A list of a few of my favorite things

What we did for dinner last night and the disaster it was (JaDee cooked via his "gift").

Gratefulness that all of you are now feeling a bit brisk in the air.

My most delicious nap that I was able to take yesterday.

I decided to spare you my political analysis and go with JaDee's dinner disaster as follows.

Our neighbor shot a moose a few weeks ago and shared the bounty with up in the form of its liver. When he presented this bit of flesh to us I didn't even invite him in but ran back to find JaDee leaving our guest with a bloody Ziploc bag full of moose organs on the stoop.

As I hid in the back of the house listening to the exchange over how tasty liver and onions would be made out of this gift, I could only hope it ended up forgotten in the back of the freeze as JaDee accepted this neighborly gift. Such hopes were dashed when I woke up from that aforementioned nap and I was asked what my plans were for dinner.

As I had nothing concrete started or even planned, JaDee whipped that liver out of the freezer and said he would fry this up.

I got out a big bowl of kashi cereal and went and folded laundry.

An HOUR later the starving kids were served this delicacy.

5 minutes after that I loaded the boys up to go to Carrs for Chinese buffet grocery store style.

Olivia followed her mother's example and had Trix.

My house still stinks.

is anyone else bugged by this?

I sat down to Oprah the other day. I used to be a faithful Oprah fan. Read her book club books (and wondered why I did when I was finished with one); got her magazine (you know the ones with only her on the cover) and followed her advice in fashion, shoes, psycho-babble and a-ha moments. Not all bad (except some of her books but I did discover Christopher Bojhalian from one of her choices and I love him).

Then she got full of herself and started in with the celebrities and it started a disconnect with me. So needless to say it has seriously been a couple of years since I sat down to an episode.

At first I thought I had stumbled on a Jerry Springer show. Except that since the "guest" was the daughter of a celebrity rock star from the Momma's and the Poppa's and thus, a celebrity herself. Therefore it makes what she revealed, "Oprah worthy."

I'm sure you heard about it. The incest? Google Mackenzie Phillips if you didn't but be prepared. It made me sick.

And again a little worried that I was on Jerry's show. But no the host was indeed, an African American woman. So why did Oprah have her on?

First, I have come to the very late-in-life conclusion that most guests on talk shows do it as publicity. Their PR people arrange it with Oprah/Ellen/Conan/Jay to have them on to push their latest movie/book/album/TV show. Then to provide a shocking little tidbit only helps both parties involved with ratings/sales.

Second, Mackenzie said she wanted to put a face on this. That surely she is not the only person who has gone through this. And you know, I don't doubt it. I am sure she is not the only one out there. But good gravy, why did it seem so glorified by her interview with Oprah?

This morning at the gym The View was on and I was reading the subtitles as I listened to my various artists on my running track. I could write a whole other post about this show, but I digress. As they, too, hashed out the details of Mackenzie Phillips I thought how lucky I was to come from a relatively normal, albeit slightly (in comparison) dysfunctional family. And to be able to raise my kids in a normal albeit, slightly dysfunctional family;)

How many times as a kid did I wish to be part of that famous set? How many times did I wonder what it must be like to have a famous mom or dad and gobs of money at my disposal; never having to wear hand me downs from cousins, or gasp! have my mom make my lunch in a brown paper sack. How many times did I wish the boys in Teen Beat and Bop were my boyfriends as I pinned up their faces on my wall.

Yesterday I was grateful. That I have the truth in my life. That I have the knowledge of the gospel and the important roles of parents in my life and in the lives of my children.

To sum it up, a few lines from this year's Primary Program song has been hummed by my daughter the past few weeks:

God gave us families!
To help us become what he wants us to be.
This is how he shares his love,
For the family is of God!

Adoration

I commented on my sisters blog that I do what I can to maintain my children's adoration of me. For example, Carter has a friend who claims to have "Deep Thoughts." Well anyone who grew up in the 90s knows that Jack Handy is the original deep thinker and so I tell Carter that his friend is nothing but a plagerizer (how do you like that for a made up word). And I then tell Carter how cool I was to have been around when those Deep Thoughts were first coined. See. Adoration maintained.

With the upcoming school year fast approaching (for us it is Wednesday Aug 19!!!!) I have a son in Jr. High, one in 3rd and a pre-schooler. All of which will be away from me part or all of the day. Thus I will be competing for adoration with teachers. The archnemesis of mothers everywhere.

How can I compete. What with tap dancing, salmon egg hatching, big band playing, science experiment blowing up, story time and name tags on a desk. All of it new and exciting and nothing like what boring old mom does at home. She just makes us do chores and yells when the aren't done.

I don't stand a chance.

I guess a part of me will admit that I am glad my kids have always had an adoration for someone other than me. Someone who helps me open their eyes to the whole big world out there in a context outside of home. Someone who will take the time to raise black widows (Mr. Jeffs) and direct a play (Mrs. Barker) and tell a joke everyday (Miss Bird) and run a mile (Mr. Nichols) and hatch salmon eggs (Mr. Herbert).

Because the long and the short of it is I need these people and appreciate their help in educating my sons and daughter.

So good luck this year to all you teachers and students heading back to school. I will be anxiously awaiting for the sound of the bus as it drops my kiddos back on my doorstep, filled with knowledge and inspired to make a go of this great world.

I'll even share some adoration with you.