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Monday: What I Hope For This Week

Monday, September 29, 2014




7:45am. 
Quinn is starting to stir, but he's not actually up and out of his bed yet, and Lucy is, of course, still sleeping. Noah has gotten on the bus, and we begin the week NOW. The sun rising today is so lovely--- it outlined Noah's sweet head and shoulders as he stood at the end of the driveway waiting for his bus and talking to himself-- some epic dialog about something epic, I have no doubt. The sun also highlighted the slowly-changing tones of the leaves on the trees. We're in that phase now where everything green is a little more golden-green, and some go-getters are actually changing to orange and red. I cannot wait. Autumn is my absolute favorite. I've been teaching Lucy what Fall is, and she's getting it. When she sees vibrant fall color, she cries out, "It's Autumntime!" Awesome. 

What I hope for this week:
  • In spite of this brand-new cold I've just gotten, I hope for positive energy.
  • I hope that our income tax comes in.
  • I hope that I am able to remember to listen to the little things from each of my kids, enough so that they feel heard and cherished. 
  • I hope that we get to spend a little of each day outside, even though Mother Nature is being mean and keeping temps around 82 degrees most of the week. 
  • I hope to get some fabric and get started on Halloween costumes. 
  • I hope that the littles will go easy on me today because I plan to be useless and let the TV play more than usual so I can rest and maybe get better a little faster. 
  • I hope that the rest of the week I don't have to rely on too much TV to survive. 
  • I hope that I can tune in to any needs that my friends might have, so I can be a listening ear or a support to them. 
  • I hope I can remember to bite my tongue when the all-too-easy route of criticizing rises to my throat. 
  • I hope my kids get plenty of time to be creative and to have stories and music in their days. 
  • I hope I can make time for some reading for myself. And editing a few personal photos. 
  • I hope to get caught up on a few very important work things. 
  • I hope to be able to let go when things don't go as I want them to. 
  • I hope to make at least one pumpkin-flavored something this week, and at least one good soup. Even if it really is still 82 degrees. 

What do you hope for your coming week? Is it a busy one for you?  Mine is on the lower end of "busy", and that is a lovely thought.

Oh, there's Quinn. My time is up. Til next time!

I Will Try To Write Something.

Friday, September 26, 2014

 
7:47am, Friday morning. Sit down and try to write something: GO. 

Noah has just gotten on the bus (the bus driver had to beckon me over to tell me she's telling all the parents that the kids need to calm down in the afternoons-- they're getting too rowdy and making her afternoon route difficult) and I am going to try to sit down at this computer some mornings a week just to write...Even though every time Quinn sees me sit in this chair, he pleads to sit on my lap and watch Elmo on YouTube. EVERY TIME. I'm going to pull the ottoman over and try to see if he will detach himself from the idea of my lap and just sit alongside me instead. It does still mean I will have Elmo next to me on the screen while I type... but its a season of concessions, ya know? And I need to write. 

At this point, I will sit, but with no concrete intentions beyond just putting fingers to keyboard-- hence the play-by-play that today's entry is turning into. I know that A.) I need to write ("I will write myself into well-being"- Nancy Mair) just for my own balance and joy. And  B.) This blog is more of a journal in my life than my actual journal has been for many years now, and I cherish journaling. C.) Even if the world of Facebook and Instagram has mostly killed off personal blogging and bloggers and BLOG READERS, I cherish this little world here, and any readers I have left, and I don't want you to give up on me.D.) If I show up and put hands to keyboard more frequently, then perhaps I will write past the brain-dump stage and begin to have actual ideas, theses, themes, topics, stories.... More cohesive things to say, with a planned, writerly beginning and end. Perhaps. Maybe not. Maybe you'll just always be subjected to my freewriting forever, and then you'll leave and go read something much more fulfilling, and that's okay. I'll still be here, trying to write.

(Since 7:47, I've clicked on 5 different "Super Simple Songs" YouTube videos for Quinn. So far, he's content on the ottoman next to me. He has a train in each chubby fist and is riveted by the music and cartoony visuals. We haven't even started on Elmo yet today, but it's early.)

It's been twenty days since I last blogged. For the first time since starting it, this span of time has actually been fully unintentional, and I've even gone for most of the first two weeks not even realizing I'd let it slip. Then this last week, I've been amazed at myself for not even having it on my guilt-radar, which of course, then gets it onto that guilt radar... But no-- it's not just guilt. it's that usually I get itchy to blog so much sooner than this, and that itch wasn't there. Just LIFE, ya know? And it makes sense to me when weeks go by like this, how friends and bloggers I've loved in the past fade away from blogging and try to come back and then try again a few months later, and then.... nothing. It's the end. 

I don't want that here. For above-mentioned reasons. 

And I DO prepare blog posts in my head. All day. Daily. I really do think about my life through the lens of writing and photo-taking. The photo-taking is easier to keep up with, even if those photos don't get culled, edited, shared as much as they get taken. The internal dialog I have all day, though--- that is so much harder to keep up with. I feel like I have these pesonal epiphanies or funny observations or just stories about my little adventures, and the words form in my head and could go straight to paper if I could just sit RIGHT THEN and write them down. But inevitably, the times I finally have some headspace to think thoughts that get deep and fleshed out are when I'm DRIVING. Or holding Quinn for his pre-nap snuggle. Or MOWING THE LAWN. Or going for a walk. 

You too? It makes total sense: those times are meditative. Those times are times when less external demand is upon me, yet I'm still engaged... I'm not answering Noah's questions or meeting Lucy's demands.... I'm not rushing to keep Quinn out of danger. The headspace is open, even as the hands or feet are working. And in this perfect combination of action/non-action, my thoughts are free to flow. But once that meditative time is done- I've arrived at my location, or Quinn has been laid down, or the lawn is done, it's GO-TIME again and I'm back on-duty and of course it's no time to sit at a keyboard and write. But by the time I get time to sit alone, my head has emptied and I'm just glad for a break from ALL of it, thinking included. Constant push-and-pull of this life right now. (We've moved on to Elmo. It's keeping him content. Thank you, YouTube.)

I am not complaining: The trade-off is worth it to me. I am choosing to multi-task less, to require less of myself, to appreciate the way my life looks right this minute. (Oh, he's slid off the ottoman and seemed like he might go play away from me, but no, he's back on my other side and pulling my arm, asking, "Down?" which means "Up?".....My time is ending....) And I DO appreciate this version of life. But I also miss journaling. Blogging. Writing. So maybe I can sit a few mornings a week, right after Noah has gotten on the bus, while Lucy still sleeps, and train Quinn to be okay with Ottoman-Elmo-Time, and get some of this out of me and down for posterity. I'm going to give it a try. Don't look for remarkable-ness.... just look for me showing up. That's a pretty good goal for now.

(8:16. Not bad, actually. Thanks, Quinn.)

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Lucy and Me: Twinkle Twinkle....

Saturday, September 6, 2014

One of the images from my last post reminded me of this iPad video from the same moment. I love my musical girl. I would love it if she genuinely continues to be interested in music and pursues her talent in it throughout her life...

 


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Small, Silent Moments...{iPhotos}

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

“My mind then wandered. I thought of this: I thought of how every day each of us experiences a few little moments that have just a bit more resonance than other moments—we hear a word that sticks in our mind—or maybe we have a small experience that pulls us out of ourselves, if only briefly—we share a hotel elevator with a bride in her veils, say, or a stranger gives us a piece of bread to feed to the mallard ducks in the lagoon; a small child starts a conversation with us in a Dairy Queen....

And if we were to collect these small moments in a notebook and save them over a period of months we would see certain trends emerge from our collection—certain voices would emerge that have been trying to speak through us. We would realize that we have been having another life altogether; one we didn’t even know was going on inside us. And maybe this other life is more important than the one we think of as being real—this clunky day-to-day world of furniture and noise and metal. So just maybe it is these small silent moments which are the true story-making events of our lives.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God 

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{Phone photos, late spring to June....}




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