Now what.....?

May was a challenging month. I don't mean it was a bad month because there were so many fun and wonderful days where I laughed hard, worked hard, rested, enjoyed my family, enjoyed friends, was encouraged and just generally enjoyed life and living.  But the news about my brother's cancer has been a hard thing to swallow let alone digest.  It's led me down dark and cob-webbed hallways in search of I know not what. It's had me examining rooms that I had locked behind me and trying to see ahead through windows and into rooms that aren't yet ready for occupancy. It's been too easy to escape into mind numbing activities to avoid thinking at all.

My Hunky said it best yesterday: "Everything is in flux"

And so it is. Yet at the same time I can't escape this nagging niggle at the back of my soul that says I am getting too comfortable, too safe, too routine, and truth be told I have taken to pacing the house nights like a restless tiger, padding the same paths back and forth until a groove is worn in the ground.  Fortunately, running has again addressed the sleep issues I was having and as soon as I stretch out on my bed everything shuts down quickly and completely. I sleep and sleep until about twenty minutes before my alarm goes off. This last part makes me a bit sad because I'd really like to sleep until my alarm, but I'm so happy to be sleeping again that I don't let it bother me for more than a moment or two.

I'm reading the Bible in 99 days with a wonderful people from just about everywhere.  We're using the Bible in 90 days program so accomplishing it in 99 days means we are just overflowing with grace for those days when life throws you curve balls. It also means there is still time to be part of something that really matters.  Most mornings find me with my coffee and my kindle camped out on the deck while the sun comes up.  Though it's turning muggy for running, it's wonderful still for sitting and reading.  I get my running done as early as possible and then take my time with the Word.

Summer has started all around. We are only weeks from camp which means only a small amount of time before we do some summer schooling.  Writing that sentence makes me want to lapse into another mind numbing activity without actually allowing it to sink in.  My oldest is starting high school, yes you read that right. I feel ill equipped to handle this properly, as though there are new rules that I haven't read and am not sure where I left them since they aren't in the game box.  All of us have uttered the phrase, "I don't want to mess up my kids;"  I'm saying it with a lot more intensity lately. If you see me walking around muttering under my breath you can know that that is what I am saying, or praying.

I'm challenging myself to blog every day in June. If that doesn't work out, I'm considering becoming a lettuce farming hermit and just gardening and eating until the end of time.

Mistress Moon

I told myself it was foolish
really
to write poetry by moonlight.
Silver-misted shadows
do not release muses
or magic
Though it does tease imagining.
Crinkled waves of moonlight cried.
A lonely goose knelled seranades.
Owls echoed inquiry.
The silvered silhouette of one
Great Blue Heron
stood sentry over my hesitant words.

My stark moonshadow mocks.
She has more business here than I.
Ethereal she is, smoke but no substance.
She dares to flirt with moon fairies,
Not I.

I have spurned magic and muses for
the bold, gold light of day,
brassy and loud,
revealing.
Who needs silver shrouds,
fey fancies?
Surely not cynical me.

But when I could resist no longer
the siren call of beauty,
My magical moon mistress,
I know I heard the waves lap applause
that I
simply I
would scale the sheer walls
of sense and propriety
and dip one toe
into her scattered silver path.
Only to realize I cannot walk on water.

At least,
not yet.

Opportunity: 5 Minute Friday

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Opportunity

Isn't that what haunts us? What bites at our heels always spurring us on to do more, to be more, to have more because what if (oh the what-if's), WHAT IF WE MISS THE ALL IMPORTANT OPPORTUNITY??  
What if it comes and on that day we don't have all the t's crossed and all the i's dotted and opportunity takes one look at our barely contained chaos and says, "Well I guess she isn't ready. This was the day that would change her life. But just forget it. I'm moving on."

Admit it.

It's what we all think will happen. We'll miss the boat and everyone else will get on it, leaving us here on this sad and dusty shore crying for what is lost.

I think we have it wrong. I don't think opportunity only knocks once. I think it visits again and again each day, every day, sometimes every hour and minute. And each  time we have a chance to seize it and live it to the fullest: to laugh the laugh, to watch the bird, to rock the child, the have the conversation, to rest just a small moment, to be.  Opportunity isn't a fractious miser with only one gift for each in our entire lifetime of days.
No.
Opportunity is extravagant and generous, begging us to make the most of it, not wait for the least of it. It wants us to celebrate and revel and embrace with arms and eyes wide open each fleeting minute that it presents. It croons softly "Live. Really live. Be. Yourself. In the moment. And I will never, ever be hard to find."  It calls and knocks and shows up at the doorstep and insinuates itself in the corners and sometimes knocks us flat on the sidewalk it wants so badly to be found. Not in one momentous decision, but in a thousand life changing events, the minutes that fill our lives every single day.

Slow down.
Relax.
We are only going to miss opportunity if we run right by it so narrow minded that we miss all the gifts already surrounding us.

Quick Takes Friday; Vol. 2. Ed. 14

1. I haven't posted a quick takes in two weeks. I haven't blogged in an entire week.  Instead, I went home. I went home and hugged my mom and brothers; I played in the dirt and invested in an herb garden. We celebrated life and more life.  We waited ridiculously long amounts of time for minor things. We ate copiously; we laughed more copiously. We were entirely ourselves again (still always missing our Dad ), and although that changes nothing about my brother's circumstances, it changed a great deal about my perspective. I needed that, desperately.  I needed to hug his tall, gangly frame and look into his crinkly blue eyes and just feel the very realness of him to remember that this is only an interruption. A scary, horrible, sickening interruption, but only an interruption all the same. In a few months we will still be entirely us, and he will be entirely cancer-free. That's something I am hanging onto in all my prayers.

My "Live Long" band I purchased in honor of my brother.

Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul, 
And sings the tune without the words, 
And never stops at all...

    Emily Dickinson

2. Going back to the subject of the herb garden, I am excited to finally do this thing that I have wanted to do for years and years.  I don't know what kept me from it, but I think it may have been a bit of misplaced guilt, guilt at doing something entirely fun with only nominal benefit and guilt at the initial expense of starting the pastime.  I'm getting better at allowing things that are joyful without having any real dividend.  Who knows who instilled in me the idea that fun was wasteful; probably the same individual that tells all of us that rest is for the lazy, sleep is for the weak and boredom should be avoided at all cost.  That voice doesn't really have a place in my life these days, and I think I am the better for it.  I started with seven or eight herbs, some mints (apple, peppermint and spearmint), some lovely oreganoes and thymes, (couldn't we all do with more thyme?) delicious basils (one a gift from a wise brother who knows me well) and one gorgeous parsley, a gift from a sweet friend.  I'm still hunting for the crown jewel, cilantro, and some chives. I may try a bit of chocolate mint as well.  All of  them need potting still, but that is a job for tomorrow.  Today is a rest day.

3. In two weeks my whole family except me goes to camp. I get to stay home and just be. By. myself.  It is one of my very favorite things! I am more than a little excited!

4. I came home with a few other treasures from my mom's house, which resulted in a quite a few conversations about what a minimalist is doing bringing things in instead of getting rid of things. I find this to be a common misunderstanding about what it means to minimalize. I've disposed many things in various ways allowing me the benefit of bringing in things that I truly enjoy. I don't have to feel obligated to hang on to something because it might be useful one day, or because I loved it long ago even if I really don't anymore. One of the things I received was an adorable set of summery plates with a matching serving bowl and platter set:

Could they be any happier? The plates are very small but perfect for a strawberry and cheese breakfast enjoyed under the Mother's Day deck umbrella on a summer morning.  I don't hate all things. I simply want to enjoy every thing I have, and when you have too much that isn't possible.  Having less means I have time - time to share, enjoy, contemplate and use the things I keep. Win-win-win.

5. Speaking of minimalism, I packed for four days away entirely in a duffle bag. It was FABULOUS.  I'm pretty impressed, if I do say so myself. That includes running wear, books and cosmetics. All in one bag. Old dogs can  learn new tricks!

6. In the realm of gross but practical, I carried a wee traveler home with me from Tennessee in the shape of a tick latched on between my toes.  I recently heard that a dish soap soaked cotton ball will force them to detach and then you just wipe them away as they stick to the soap on the cotton ball.  I tried it and met with a GREAT success. Winter was so mild this year, "experts" say that it will be a bad year for the little critters, so I am glad to have an easy way to remove them. I also hear that tea tree oil and water mixed at 1:2 ratio makes a good tick repellent. I haven't tried that, but I am keeping it in mind.

7. After a long and somewhat non-committal  spring, I think we finally are entering summer. The temps are consistently up, meaning we have closed the windows and turned on the a/c.  I'm always sad when this happens because I love fresh air and open windows, but not enough to leave the air off.  Grandma graciously loaded the girls up with new floats, noodles and various other swimming go-withs so we are geared up and ready to go for the season. Here's to an easy summer with floating, gardening, relaxing and even some projects. But on my day of rest, I am not really wanting to explore the projects so we'll just talk about those another day.

Seeking

Yesterday, was a no-good very hard day.  It was a day that re-birthed in me the memories of  horrible things. Some days you want to bottle up and carry with you, so that you can uncork the beauty and the wonder of it and experience it all over again. Then there are the days you want to bury in a cement coffin, in a deep, deep trench in the very depths of the cold, dark ocean and try to forget that you buried something there at all. Some things you don't "Get over" you just crawl along, weeping and gasping and somehow get through it. One day you turn around and realize how much beautiful, wonderful life has passed since that very bad day and you feel very,very grateful.  You begin to release your death grip on your shattered soul and let the light shine in a little bit again.  The darkness begins to roll away, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but it does roll away, and you pray that  your hope isn't broken, and that your smile will reach your eyes again.  Then one day you find it isn't and it does.  Maybe just maybe, you will be as blessed as I have been and you will run and even fly away from that day and only very very infrequently ever look back; and only to see how far you have come, never ever ever to re-examine the thing that you've buried.

Unfortunately, buried things don't always stay buried. And they have a very long reach.

I had a conversation yesterday that I don't think anyone should ever have to have, ever, for any reason.  I'm still mad at God about it. We are wrestling hard today, or maybe I'm just running.  If there was ever anything I never wanted to do, it was to unearth and relive one of the darkest days of my life. The day I lay inside the entrance of my empty apartment, the place where my knees finally collapsed and I could no longer stand, or move, or breath. The day my bald, wasted, angry, hopeless self tried to bury itself in the filthy carpet and simply. stop. breathing so I could stop hurting, so cancer would stop taking. every.thing. I. ever. wanted. or. hoped. for.

That day.
That awful, awful, awful day.

It is small comfort to me now, though I it doesn't lessen my gratitude, that the days and years following that day would restore what the locusts had eaten, would breathe life into dry wasted bones, because I cannot promise that blessing will be reproduced for anyone, ever.  Sometimes it is, but not always. Not often. Not in the way I want it to be reproduced.  The agonizingly guilty fact is, on days when I can feel my toes and remember your name, it's like cancer never happened to me. I have not one long term effect that is beyond a minor annoyance. I have lived on to have kids, and adventures, and a beautiful marriage and love and life.


But it doesn't happen that way for everyone.
It doesn't happen that way for most people.
It has never happened that way for those I love most.

I can't make any sense of any of it at all. Not even by dissecting the rotted corpse of that day.

I'm reciting all the promises I know are True, but I'm angry because I can't make them work the way I want them to work.  I can empathize, weep, and speak words of love, but I cannot cure or make promises. I feel like I am a mockery of all the comfort I want to give because I did walk away almost clean, barely scarred so why would I offer anything but  hopeful words and belief in a beautiful future. I am powerless to do anything but hurt and pray and weep today.  I am not seeking answers; I am seeking God.

Control

 I like to pretend sometimes that I can control many things.  I make plans and write lists so that I have a well-defined path with set markers and boundaries to guide me to my desired destination.  I love to cross things off one by one as I get closer to my goal.  Sometimes I'll even add things that weren't on the list but got done anyway just so that I can have the satisfaction of crossing them off, and maybe just a little bit because then it looks like I never deviated from the plan to begin with.

I realize that this control is in fact quite minuscule and not actually any form of control at all.  If a large poisonous snake were to suddenly drop from the light fixture and bite me on the ear lobe bringing me a sudden and senseless death, I wouldn't be able to stop it.  It wouldn't be on my list and all those things I hoped to accomplish would be left uncrossed-off for eternity (unless my Hunky who really does love me and even "gets" my crazy were to cross them off for me as a final act of his undying love.  It could happen. Especially if I add it to the end of the list every day from now on: "Tell Hunky to cross off all uncrossed items in case of unforeseen death by ceiling viper.")  This, folks, is my unvarnished crazy.  Feel free to run away at any time.

Even though I realize that it definitely has an edge of insanity, I still can't help but fall back on the reliable "list" when things feel scary and way out of my control. This is probably why I decided today, yet again, to make a 100 Fun Things for Summer list.  You know I have never successfully completed all 100 things, but each year it lends a lot of fun, some goals (which I do well with), and some direction to a time that can be rather aimless if I let it. I think the recent events life has dealt me means that I need a bit of directional discipline and a bit of the glamour of control.

Tomorrow I have a day with no appointments, and no car to take me there if I did, so I will be making a list, and transferring that list to a page here on the old blog.  Be looking for it, and feel free to join me with your own lists. Make them as long or as short as you want. We'll try not to worry to much about vipers and uncrossed out items.  Though  I make no promises that I won't add the last item for Hunky at the bottom of the page.

Up Next

Sometimes you think you are ready to move forward with plans you have made and sometimes? Well, sometimes life throws you twenty-seven curve balls each one more likely to cause bruising than the last.  Then you jump and dodge, you hang onto sanity by the tips of your fingers, dig your feet into the dirt and pray you don't whip off into eternity flipping head over feet.

That's me since about mid-April.

I had two fabulous, complementary aspirations: 100 Things Project and the Non-Consumer Experiment.  I still think they are great ideas, but I wasn't actually ready to start either one until now. Life got crazy, time escaped, plans fell apart, and things are still a little shaky.  But, the insanity of the week of celebration is ended.  The schedule of life is smoothing out just a smidge, and I feel like I can consider improvements rather than just bowing to the tyranny of the urgent. I can maybe even dodge a few more curve balls.

I spent a great deal of time yesterday just thinking. The weather couldn't have been more perfect if I'd created it myself.  I let the sun soak into my skin and clear the shadows in my mind. I pondered reaching the mid-point of my life (because lets be honest, a few years give or take, and I am at the halfway point - barring, you know, random cancers or what-not).  I though about all the wonderful things that fill it now, and some of the things that occupy my space and time that I do not love or enjoy, and how to be done with those things. I thought about all the things the next forty or forty five years will hold, what I hope for and who I want to be, changes that need to be made, disciplines I need to shoulder.  So many things to think about.

I don't believe in scheduling every moment of every day. In fact, I believe we'd all be a great deal healthier if we enjoyed a  more unscheduled, unplanned, unachieving hours or days of joy and relaxation, more sabbaths, but I also know that a life without aspirations is empty and aimless.  I am not yet the person I would like to be, and since I am still here, I'm obviously not completely done with my work. So in the next few days and weeks, you can expect to be reading more about my more immediate plans and even some thoughts about how to make long term shifts in behaviors and thought patterns.

I haven't forgotten my overriding purposes for this year: to be more thoughtful, kinder, more joyful and more prosperous.  My thoughts all move along these lines without my even planning it, so I know I'm being prompted act. This crazy-amazing sometimes despairing life is still a sweet adventure, curve balls and all.

Five Minute Friday: Identity

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in. (The picture is the link! Clicky-click)

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Identity

It's ironic that the topic on my birthday would be "Identity."  I've been thinking all day that this is almost a bench mark birthday. This is the year to end the first half strong.  This is the time to start the map for the second half of life in the direction I want it to go.  This is the time of cementing my identity with my calling.  I've fought both for a long time. Tried to be someone I am not, or change myself into something that never quite fit.  All along God has called me softly, leading, not pushing, to show me just who I was created to be in Him.  There have been many things that had to be stripped away, some, desperately painful. There have been so many countless blessings some huge, beyond asking or imagining, some small, but all intimately and perfectly designed by the One who knows me best to bless in a way that is specifically mine.

Hand-crafted to suit my one-of-a-kind identity.

It hasn't always been one I would have chosen.  It is one that will, in the future, continue to cause me some grief. It isn't one whose road is easy, smooth or without its share of curves and even side paths.

But its mine. From before the dawn of time, God planned me, who I am, what I will do, what ways He will use me to make His kingdom come.

"In the second half of Job's life, God blessed Him more than the first."  But not until after Job had been stripped of who he thought he was, and shown instead who God really is, and who he is in God.

It's time to embrace my identity because only I can.  I can't even begin to imagine the blessing He has for me when I do.

Stop.

BIRTHDAY EDITION QUICK TAKES FRIDAY - Vol. 2, Ed. 13

1. TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!! (pauses to let the importance of the day sink in) and I DO NOT have to share it with Mother's Day - the perfect way to ruin a birthday because you get cheated out of a day. Basically I have claimed the entire weekend for myself, to do whatever I wish. The weather is cooperating by being utterly glorious.  My friends are cooperating by being utterly AMAZING to me all week long, some just constantly loving me and my family, some coming to sit with me and my family so I don't go absolutely insane with waiting. I have truly been the recipient of community at its finest this week.  My family is cooperating by NOT MAKING ME DO DISHES FOR SEVERAL DAYS and that may be the finest gift of all. Also there will be a great deal of sun basking and book reading and whatever else strikes my fancy. I'm calling this year "Pre-40" Somehow, years ago when I was bald and scared, 40 became a distant mile-marker in my mind, because when you are twenty-three, 40 seems so very far away and old. Now I am almost here, and I know I am not old, but it has been very many years, and I am oh-so-grateful for every one of them.

2. A week ago today, my brother and thus the rest of our family found out that he has cancer. He is not quite 32.  We are devastated.  A great deal of this week I was frozen by worry and heavy with sadness. But I grabbed on to this promise, It's what we trust in but don't yet see that keeps us going. 2 Cor. 5:7 and I believe that God's priming for some serious showing off.

3. This week also brought us the birthday celebration of my beautiful youngest daughter, Olivia.  She got to have two days this year since her birthday fell on a church day ( I am so grateful to have children who are patient and understanding with Hunky's work ).  She is not like me though as she wanted to be involved in every step of her birthday dinner. She even baked her own cake. I want food delivered to me on a platter today, but for her it was special to be a part of it all.  She likes carbs. We had fried breaded fish, homemade mac and cheese, potato wedges, and biscuits, also a some strawberries and tangelos, you know, to make it healthy.  She's a officially taller than me. Not barely, a lot..inches.  How did I get to this place of giant children, high school years and teenage adventures, I do not know. But I refer you back to #1.  It's a gift, all of it, every second.  Things I never thought I'd see I'm living now.  Amazing.

4. Olivia celebrates her birthday on my cancerversary. This year was 16 years for me.  It's been a bittersweet celebration this year since my brother now also has both a cancerversary and a birthday this month.  But I am looking forward to many many many years of out-doing him in the celebrating. I'm going to teach him to throw glitter. It's going to be amazing.

5. I rescheduled the non-consumer fast for many reasons. It starts Monday. There will be another post about this in next day or so.

6. You CAN still mail me gifts for my birthday. Remember, I'm celebrating all year. Just sayin'

7. Is this not the best birthday song ever? I told you I had awesome friends!

12

She was born to make an entrance.
The only child I know who was conceived while mom was already pregnant.
She is the gift received in a misdiagnosed miscarriage.
When you think you  are pregnant you don't try not to get pregnant.
When you are me, that means you get pregnant.

By the time we found the doctor's mistake, she was already there, waiting to be discovered.
When she was discovered, it didn't matter that we didn't plan her and had no idea where we would put her outside the belly.  We simply couldn't wait to meet her face to face.

She is the one who proves my DNA carries to my babies, though she will tell you she doesn't look like me, she looks like herself.

She is always very much herself;
Her own opinions,
Her own style,
Her own mind,
Her own way.


She hates math.
She learns faster than anyone I have ever met


Her passion and her temper match her hair. I am loathe to quench either.
She has taught me more about patience than I thought possible. She sharpens me and makes me better day by day.
If I don't become better, she will  best me.

Everything she does is filled to bursting with potential. Her talent, intelligence, humor and desire are boundless.
She lives larger than life- she comes by it quite honestly. She was born on the day I celebrate life.
She does not let me claim her day, ever. She'd squeeze me out of my own birth month if she could.
She may also have inherited her mother's stubborn.

She is fierce and feisty. She'll challenge your ideas, your reasons and your authority.
She knows what she knows that she knows and she doesn't back down.

She's going to change the world one day.
I can't wait to watch it happen and cheer her on.
.

Visceral

My brother, Travis

Sunday afternoon is the busiest time on the lake. Sea-dos and wave-runners skate across like large bumble bees.  Pontoon boats, speed boats, fishing boats, skiers, ski-tubes, odd shaped floating things being pulled behind boats of all shapes and kinds dart back and forth or circle round and round in front the point.  It's very busy.  I watched it today from my chair on the deck, under the tree. I watched them, and smelled the smell of water on the air and passed the time counting clouds and pretended to read.  Everything else spun and buzzed and droned and flapped around me, but I just felt quiet and still.

I remember feeling the same way sixteen years ago when I found out I had cancer. Everyone, all of life, just kept moving and going and rolling along. People laughed and celebrated and hurried here and there.  No one stopped and yet I was stuck, completely frozen in the horror of my present.  I wanted to scream, "Can't you just stop for a minute! Don't you know I have cancer?" And internally I did scream, but no one heard.  Because that is the nature of life and time. It must march on whether or not we have been suddenly hollowed out.

I didn't ever think that anything would affect me like that again.  I certainly never expected cancer to ever be so personal again.  Strangely enough, it's even more personal when it isn't you, but someone you love, deeply.  When you know what it feels like for everything inside to freeze all at once from a few words, when you know the vice grip of pain and fear around your heart, the way the lungs deflate and become heavier and more dense with each subsequent breath, when the very weight of grief behind your eyes makes crying endless and sleep elusive, you would do anything, anything on this earth to kill the possibility of that moment ever happening to anyone you know, not even your worst enemy.

But I don't have that power, and apparently somehow my DNA is writ in such a way that those who share it must somehow also share my nightmare and my grief.  I hate the weight of this cross, of pain and fear and sickness and even death.  I've come to rest easy with God on many things, but time and again I have begged, "No more" - after my father, my best friend, my grandmother and still there is no end.    So we wait, my mother, my brothers and I.  Frozen again.  Waiting for answers and options and treatment schedules and test results while all the world buzzes on and around. We wait and we pray without words and believe that there is more than one of us who can fight this beast and win.  I'd trade my own fight for any one of theirs.
Instead I will lean into the words I told my brother yesterday. "These are the worst days. There will be other very hard and very crappy days, but these first days of knowing are the hardest. It will get easier from here."

I will believe I told the truth.

Quick Takes Friday, Vol. 2 Ed. 12

1. It feels like ten years have passed since my last quick takes. I even checked to see if I skipped last week, but no. I did not.  Looking back over my week, it didn't seem the busy day to day but now that I am at the end of it, it feels like it was a weighty, busy, ragged week.

2. As I was typing #1, the power went out. Then we went to a movie - The Avengers. It was indeed awesome!  Then we came home and had a family dinner. Then we swam for an hour.  I am not feeling so much like blogging any more which is unfortunate since I didn't finish this earlier and there are still five more scintillating and amazing things I have left to share with you.

3. Next week is fairly momentous. It contains Olivia's 12th birthday, my 16th cancerversary, and my birthday, a wedding, Mother's day, and a visit from my mom.  I expect to be fairly worn out by the end of it all.

4. Today has been great fun but it hasn't felt particularly restful.  I am selfishly happy that this weekend is pretty empty as far a places to be or things to prepare for.  In fact, other than church, I still have two full days in front of me. I really haven't done any real counting on my 100 things challenge, though I have purged a lot, lot, lot. I think I am intimidated to count for fear I will realize I own a BILLION things and then have to come clean about it. It could happen. I'm not sure then what the fallout would be, but I am fairly certain it's no where near the scale I have built it up to be in my head.

5. Tuesday started my Non-Consumer Experiment.  This past month has been so off kilter that it kind of snuck up on me. Apparently when one is about to not spend for a year, one runs out, purchases three tank tops, some rafts and a pretty flimsy cheese slicer.  Then one runs home, grabs a few songs off I-tunes and stocks up on writing and geography curriculum for next year. That's it. That 's all I had time to do after all my thinking about it when it came to the last day. So with a wing and a prayer, I'm off.  This week hasn't felt very weird or hard, and I still went to the grocery store too many times. That's the real hurdle.  I have to get some personal guidelines for that.

6. I was inspired by a friend today to start putting together some reading lists for my girls this summer. They read avidly but tend to stick to the fantasy/ science fiction genre, and I am going to force them to spread their wings a bit and read some new things.  When I get those lists put together, I'll share them here if anyone is interested.

7. Today is the day I cop out of 7 Quick takes.  We'll call it 6.25 Quick takes Friday!

Beginnagains

So, I don't know what exactly happened to April.  Apparently you fly across the country a couple times and then drive a few hundred miles a couple times and throw a few big shin digs, and you enter a time warp where entire months simply disappear! I turned around Monday and realized that it was April 30th. I hadn't run in thirty days.  I gave in to home-school-itis for thirty days (this means I creatively defined education and used it to count school days).  I didn't have very disciplined eating for thirty days--some days were very, very, VERY undisciplined.  I coasted and justified and excused and lived very moment to moment for thirty days.  It was wonderful.  As much as I love structure, and I do thrive in it, there are times when it's good to leave the bed unmade because you might use it sometime after lunch, to watch House reruns for four hours while working on your crochet, to eat three helpings of Texas chocolate sheet cake, to do more things on fewer hours sleep than you thought humanly possible, to laugh until your ribs hurt and your voice lowers an octave.  These are all very good things.  BUT  if I lived like this all the time, I'd have to break my own consumer fast so that I could buy many many pair of very large elastic waist stretchy pants. We'd also have to hire a maid and a tutor because nothing would get done around here.  My mattress would develop a me-shaped depression from all the hours of my derriere being pressed into it.  Basically all order as we know it would break down into chaos and the universe would implode.

Instead this week I chose to celebrate Beginnagains. It's my way of acknowledging that sometimes every discipline you practice comes to a screeching halt and life takes a sharp right turn, tap-dancing in mismatched shoes.  It's turning my perfectionist upside down and allowing myself to frolic in all my glorious flawdom because there is always I chance that tomorrow I will begin again. And so I have. This week was filled with the rebirth of running and (at last! Oh-praise-ye-the-LAAAWWWWWDDD!) swimming.  I stopped eating sugar filled death trap food and instead again eating things that had roots just a few days ago.  I began consuming coconut oil in oddly disconcerting amounts.  I organized my kindle. Please grasp the magnitude, here.  I once again hauled all the laundry room accumulates--the laundry room is the place where purged items rest until I am ready to shove them out the door-- to the van for site removal. My children are once again literate and so happy to be reading Longfellow sonnets while balancing proportions and comparing and contrasting the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems (and watching Mythbusters a little bit. I still have a lingering cough of homeschoolitis). In other words, life moved on, and I didn't bother wasting time lamenting all that I didn't do in April. I celebrated what did happened, and I sidled up to May. I whispered, "Dear sweet birthday month, you are going to be ah-MAY-zing because you are so filled with possibility you are absolutely bursting. Let's do this last year of thirty like its 1999."

I spoke with a friend today about the fine line between excellence and perfection. She and I suffer from the same imbalance, often leaning way too far over into the snare of perfection instead of swimming freely in the depths of excellence.  I can't waste time mourning what might have been because I can never ever recover those days and minutes. If I stop looking at them through the lens of perfectionism, I see that they are kaleidoscopically brilliant, composed as I would never have envisioned because I don't see in enough dimensions.

Beginnagains. It isn't too late to join the party. There's wonderful moments to explore. You should join me.

Surface Tension

Water surface
mirror smooth
breaking at
eye level.
Sea and sky
bifurcate.
Exhalation creates
tidal disruptions
for miniscule surfers
of entomological bent,
Defying logic,
Denying physics,
Walking on water,
So unimportant
surface tension
remains intact.
I pass swiftly.
They hover
in my wake.
If I became
small enough,
unimportant,
maybe I too
could walk
on water.