Ramona and Beezus

First I have to preface this by saying that I am an emotional movie watcher.

The first movie I ever cried at was "The Little Mermaid;" not the Disney version but the real one where she turns into sea foam.

After that first event, it was a sob fest ever after. My little brother even once qualified that a movie had to be great because, "M cried."

I never thought how obnoxious it must be to watch a movie with such a sobber; I always agreed with my mom that my dad and brothers were just insensitive clods who had less emotion than a tea cup.

My daughter is teaching me their pain.

Yesterday we watched Ramona and Beezus and when the cat died, my daughter came up to me and fell into my side crying.

"It was so sad when the cat died."

My first thought was that she was faking but then I looked at her and her lashes were wet and there were real tears on her cheeks.

I took a deep breath and found my inner patience and said a silent prayer of gratitude to God for all the years my family put up (and continues to do so) with my tears and a prayer that they find more patience because I think our sobbing club just added a new member.

****update: yeah - I totally teared up at the end of the movie. Damn family shows.

Not Quite What Was Intended

My dad is a fairly gruff guy, not generally given to spoiling or adoring his grandchildren, so I was pleasantly surprised when he forwarded me this yesterday and expressly told me to share it with my kids.

The tune is catchy and the message is timely so I've been singing it ever since.

Sorta.

The problem I start out thinking, "My name is Jesus" and end up with this.

Not quite what my dad intended I'm sure.

A Day in My Life

Alarm goes off at 6am. I hit snooze as the thought of continued sleep sounds so much better than even a gentle Rodney Yee session of yoga.

My children wake up, one by one, to pee and then commence talking and making loud bumps doing heaven only knows what in their bedroom.

I get up and yell at them calmly tell them that I would like a few more minutes of sleep and that they should be in their beds, silently waiting for me to wake them.

I go back to bed, get comfortable only to hear the real alarm go off at 6:30am.

I get out of bed and abruptly flip on my children's light again calmly tell my children in a sing-song voice that it's morning and time to get up. I stomp off to the kitchen, not the least bit grumpy or feeling guilty that I chose sleep over stretching with Rodney. (Yes, we have a lightning rod on the house. Why do you ask?)

I make a delicious breakfast of eggs and pancakes (did you notice I didn't have to add any strike throughs there?) and feed my children (and the two dogs - one akita, one black lab) patiently waiting and drooling at the edge of the kitchen.

I sit on the couch and read my scriptures and pray (assuming the call of the couch doesn't lure me back to sleep) while, ahem, gently reminding my children to get ready for school. (Yes, I'm that good. Aren't you glad God doesn't grade on a curve? And yes, the irony of reading about the kindness of Jesus and the value He placed on children while I'm yelling and, perhaps, even at times using sarcasm to motivate my children is not lost on me.)

Around 7:29am I frantically pull my daughter's hair into some sort of do so it isn't in her face so that at 7:30am we can start family scripture study.

At 7:45am (five minutes late now), we have a prayer and I kick them out of the house. Then I sit on the couch and spend the next five or ten minutes involved in an intense inner dialogue about whether or not I really want to work out and how strenuous that work out should be.

Around 8:15am (I have to change clothes and what not), I actually start working out.

9:30am - I'm in the shower.

10:am  - I'm making my breakfast (tofu scramble anyone?) and my lunch (kale chips and a turkey-hummus sandwich). I also try to throw a load of laundry in the wash sometime during the morning.

10:30am (ish): I stroll into work and thank God, literally, for the benefits of being a bookkeeper for a small family business owned by the man who sired me (how mad could he ever get at his grown daughter?) and the man I'm sleeping with (how mad could he ever get at the one who puts out?) and then further milk their affections by playing games, reading blogs and checking email.  I did give up Facebook so that's one less thing.

11:15am: Walk home to pee. Change the laundry.

Somewhere in there I throw in a few hours of balancing books, finding money we didn't know we had to pay bills that we've known about for a little too long, sending out statements and paying taxes to one government or the other. If I'm feeling real virtuous, I might even walk the aforementioned doggies so my dad doesn't have to. I'm generous like that. (And there are usually one or two more trips home to pee. And change the laundry.)

3:00pm: I drive to town to pick up my three children from their various schools and head home. They have snack and I start frantically combing the kitchen for something that can be dinner within the next half hour. The rest evening is a whirl of karate, church activities, skating lessons, or staying home and folding all that laundry, depending on the day of the week.

9:00pm: Bed. So. Tired. I know people say that exercising gives you energy, but I think they lie. I could stay up MUCH later before I started working out.

The rest, as they say, is a matter of rinse and repeat, which never ceases to amaze me; that so many nothing, ordinary, routine days can add up to three children half grown, 13.5 years of marriage and my being middle aged. How did all this happen?!

Channeling Pollyanna

The shop has no bathroom.  Let me just put that out there first.

I know - I'm obsessed.  I'm sorry.  I don't mean to be.  It just is what it is, I guess.


Anyway, not having a bathroom necessitates a daily, if not more frequent, walk from the shop to our house (which is why we are so determined to live close by).  Happily, most of the time, the house is only a block away.  There are days, though, when that block feels like miles.  And miles.

When I'm at work, our black lab, Carbon, believes firmly that anytime I stand and put on my coat, I am taking her for a walk.  Period.  There are no exceptions to this rule.  So she walks with me and I use one of those "chuck-it sticks" (because I totally throw like a girl - a toddler sized one at that) and she chases the ball all the way home.

Yesterday, I threw the ball and heard her feet thunder past.  The first throw is the best as she runs the fastest for that very first ball.

I love that sound.

And it got me thinking. 

I've been here for more than a year and while I've spent a great deal of time bemoaning the move and missing my home of 9 years in Oregon, I haven't really praised my current home.

Well, in Oregon, we only had a small yard and we lived in a fairly busy part of town so it was not possible for me to let my dog off leash and let her chase balls.  In Alaska, I do it daily and I LOVE the sound of her running.

I love having water just out my front door.  I love the reflections on the water, the boats, the calm seas, the rough seas. . . . I just love having water right. there.

I love the wind.  We get these gnarly winds that roll off the ice fields and glaciers and blow so hard that I can't breathe.

I love that.

I love watching things blow by in the wind . . . leaves . . . sticks . . . grocery bags . . . small children . . .

Once, when we were kids, my older brother taped cardboard to his arms and the wind picked him up and carried him a foot or two.

I love all the mountains and seeing them slowly morph from summer green to fall gold to winter brown topped with snow.  Right now it's perfect; no snow on the ground and just enough on the mountains to make them look interesting and majestic.

I think that's all.

I wouldn't want to overwhelm you with my positivity and gratitude.

But I did want to let you know - it doesn't completely suck up here in the north.

Like Daughter, Like Mother

Sunday was the Primary Program.  This year marked my last opportunity to enjoy a sacrament meeting without any children by my side.  It was lovely.

It was also quite lovely watching all three of them sing and talk.  The downside is that I always cry. 

And cry.

And then cry a bit more.

It's just how it goes.  My children seem to have accepted this.  In fact, it seems to be coloring their world view.  The kids wrote most of the program (after adult prompting to be sure) and my daughter's piece went something like this:

"Knowing Jesus loves me makes me happy when I'm not crying, tears fall from my eyes."

Ecstasy of Life

I was once told in college by my shroom-tripping roommate that I was probably the only person she'd ever met who seemed to be high on life.

Today I feel like I'm on ecstasy - not that I've ever experimented, but the purported feeling of heightened senses seems to fit today.  Everything seems more today: the things of beauty are so beautiful and sentimental that they make me cry and the knife cuts like a surgeon's scalpel; one song makes me dance and laugh and the very next track on my playlist has me sobbing like a baby.

I don't know if it's stress or hormones or what but everything seems to be too, too much.

My children are growing to fast: Will I have enough time to hold them and love them, so that even when I'm gone they will know that they are loved beyond measure?  Am I caught up enough in the wonder of how they grow?  Am I teaching them to wrap their arms tightly around Jesus?  Am I teaching them how to live authentically and kindly?  Will they be good with money?

The snow is creeping down the mountain: Am I ready for long, dark, cold days?  At what point do I have to ease open the purse strings and allow the thermostats to be turned up a bit higher?

The business is slowing down: Will Dad allow DH the head to make changes in policy and procedure?  Can we run a business and continue to all live together? Will we be able to continue to meet our high overhead?  Can we carve out some expenses?  Will we ever be out of debt?

I'm lonely: I miss my mother.  I have no spiritual advisor/mentor. I never see friends or talk to them.  My children are lonely too.  I'm homesick for Oregon.

On the upside (because I'm feeling that too): pictures of beautiful babies are making me cry, glorious sunrises and sunsets (which I see regularly now because the days are growing shorter) make me wax poetic, notes from loved ones fill my heart to overbrimming and I'm loving a cat free house (a bit more than I thought I would).

This too shall pass I suppose.

I just get tired of crying all the time.

Did I tell you I started crying at Q's parent/teacher conference?  Brilliant, no?

And no.  I'm not pregnant.

Insecurities

I have a hard time making friends.

Don't get me wrong; I gather acquaintances quite rapidly.  But friends, true deep, can completely be myself and never worry about what they think of me?  Those are hard to find.  I often feel as though I'm the kind of person that everyone befriends only on a surface level, a "Hi.  How ya doin?" at church kind of level but then studiously avoids any deeper relationship because I'm just too high maintenance.

I also often wonder how much of that problem is my own perception of myself.

I've filled out those silly little questionnaire memes that ask you all your favorites.  One of the questions, "Would you be friends with yourself?" always stops me cold.  I. don't. know.  I'm dramatic and overly emotional and I cry so often even I get annoyed.  It's hard, on some days, to find anything redeeming in myself.

I also struggle more than I should with what others think of me.  I started taking "happy pills" over two years ago.  There were so helpful and gave me the boost I needed to deal with my mother's death and move along in the grieving process.  I weaned myself off (yes, under my physicians supervision) only to have the two most important people in my life suggest that perhaps I should go back on.  I found their statements devastating as I felt like the two people I entrusted myself with didn't like me the way I am; they like me better a bit more stable and medicated.

There are days when I ask God why He created me as He did and what the value is to be found in all these emotions and idiosyncrasies of mine.  Most days I can't find an answer.

John recently wrote a beautiful post wherein he stated the following:

It was a very clear revelation. The Spirit simply said: "Do not pass through those doors if there is any doubt in your mind that you are equal to every single other person who walks through those doors. You are not inferior in any way. You are as deserving and worthy of every blessing your Heavenly Father desires pour out on every single one of his children. Do not enter without knowing that."

 I know that his struggle is different from mine, but I have often felt the same way.  I see women and men all around me who seem so much more together than me.  It certainly doesn't help that after almost 20 years of work, a college education and lots of wishing and dreaming that I find myself basically back where I was at the age of 16.  I feel like I'm stuck in mud and spinning my wheels unable, perhaps unwilling, to actually go anywhere.  I self-sabotage.  I start healthy habits and follow them religiously only to abandon them completely after just a few days.

I wish I had a point or some conclusion.  I find that frequently with blogging there is no nice little bow to tie at the end of these posts.  I would like to say that by reading John's post I've been inspired that I am enough and that I can accept myself, warts and all, as a beloved daughter of God but while I believe all that to be true, I just don't BELIEVE all that to be true.

And so I struggle.

And cry.

And eat some chocolate.

*sigh*