Living in the Moment and Other Stuff

Yikes.  Opening this is like opening that box of forgotten take-out that's been in the fridge for 10 months only I forgot how to open my blog and I don't ever forget how to open my fridge.

You're probably wondering why I haven't been blogging.  Actually, you're probably not wondering because you're probably not even reading this.  But in case you are reading this and wondering why I haven't been blogging, you should know that I've been wondering the same thing myself.

Maybe it's because:

I've been trying to decide what to make for dinner.  Dinner happens every night and it usually throws me for a loop or some Fruit Loops.  It's a real stresser.

Cool Beans went away to college which left this empty spot in my house and in my heart and apparently in my blog too.  You should also know that Cool Beans did not get to play basketball in college because she tore her ACL one week before her first game.  You should also know that when this happened her new friend Luke waited on her hand and foot, literally-- by painting her toe nails when she couldn't reach them--which is oh-so-sweet and seductive,  and now she is engaged to be married to him in June.

I have an "RJ" (real job) now.  I am teaching part-time at a private school and getting money so I can afford to pay for weddings and medical bills and chocolate-covered cinnamon bears.

I have been too busy to blog because I've been writing (in my head of course) a better season 3 finale for Downton Abbey which shouldn't be too difficult to do.  Spoiler Alert***(Instead of Downton Abbey why didn't they name it, Let's Kill all the Nice People--like Mathew's fiance (what's her name?) and Sybil and Mathew. . . really? To "top" season 3, they'll have to kill Bates and Anna in season 4.  Just sayin. . .)

I'm living with a State Champion which is kind of a big deal. After getting to the championship game 2 times before with kid two and four and coming away chanting, "We're number 2! We're number 2!," we can finally say with kid 6 "We're number 1!"  And yes, after paying $$ for fees and uniforms and driving to and from practices and games, and washing stinky uniforms, and fixing 3 bum, basketball knees, (or at least paying for it and taking care of the injured), I do feel like part of the "we" that is number one even though I did not step onto the court.

I have also been busy preparing to be the grandmother of two more grandchildren, which mostly involves modifying my diet and exercise so that I can soften more and be one of those huggy, squishy grandmas and not a bony, sharp one.  I am also working on my car seat skills, although Lila doesn't seem to mind my lack thereof.

My other excuse for not blogging is that I have a new bf named my father-in-law.  He came for a visit several months ago and stayed and he kind of "rocked" my world.  He has Alzheimer's and I have part-timers.  We make a good match.  Before he got Alzheimer's he worked as a chemical engineer, was a world traveler, and pretty much one of the smartest, nicest, wisest men I have ever known.  Now that he has Alzheimer's he is not the smartest, but he is still one of the nicest and wisest men that I know.

As you know, I like to blog about things that are funny and my new bf gave me plenty of material I could have blogged about because wearing two pairs of pants or no pants and putting your hearing aids in the freezer and wearing my glasses and putting spaghetti sauce on your salad and walking into other people's houses is funny stuff, yet at the same time it's terrifying and how do you blog about that? And if today he's putting spaghetti sauce on his salad, what's going to happen in a few months or years when he can't eat salad because he forgets how to chew and swallow?

But God and my new bf and a psychologist I heard early in the morning on the radio whose name I don't remember (part-timers), taught me a great lesson: Joy is experienced in the present, not the past or the future.  So, that is where I need to live, in the present.  As long as I am living there and not vacationing to the past (thinking about all that's lost) or the future (thinking about what's to come), I experience joy.  Each day, each moment is sweet, tender and yes funny.  And God gives me just enough strength, enough peace, enough love to experience the joy.  

 

These Things I Know Are True

These things I know are true:

That doing something everyday for 3 plus weeks does not a habit make.  Not even close.

That if you feel like you don't have enough time, spend the day with a couple of toddlers.  Recently I spent a week with my cute 3 and 2 year old grand kids.  One day we got up, got dressed, had breakfast, (I have to mention these things because although they sound ordinary, when you do them with toddlers it is quite a production), went to a movie 30 minutes away, went to Costco, ran an errand and got home at 11:45.  A.M.  I remember thinking, what in the heck are we going to do the rest of the day????  I now remember this same phenomenon with my own toddlers--so much time, so little freedom.

If you want a belly-shirt, buy something made of rayon and wash it.  Urgh.

Terriaki chicken and peach baby food taste pretty good together.  Maybe that's only if you're really hungry because you've been so busy watching kids that it's the only thing you've eaten all day.

You should never suppress a generous thought.

Just because you ride a bike doesn't mean you should wear biker shorts.

If you paint your counter tops to look like granite, your old stove and sink are gonna look, well, crappy.

High heels are a torture device invented by men to make women's butts wiggle when they walk.

Dogs and small children are very forgiving.

Oh, and I don't know how to spell terryaki, teriyaki, teriaki, and neither does blogger spell check.

Z is for Zero

There are few things that I've finished in life besides high school, dessert and birthing a baby.  So I'm pretty amazed that I finished this  A - Z challenge especially when I didn't intend to participate in the first place.  Also, it's worth noting here for you people that are taking notes that unlike school, I was not bound by law to finish the challenge, it was not particularly satisfying like dessert, and there was no huge amount of pain and discomfort to motivate me to finish.   

So, Z is for Hector Zeroni from Holes, or Zero.

Everybody calls him Zero because they think he's nothing.  But Zero knows better; he knows he's something.  Which kind of reminds me of a quote from the movie, Cool Runnings which is pretty awesome if you haven't seen it. 

Irv: Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough *with* one.

[Turns to leave]

Derice Bannock: Hey coach, how will I know if I'm enough?

Irv: When you cross that finish line tomorrow, you'll know.

So here's to Zero, here's to being enough, and here's to crossing the finish line.

Cool Runnings -- Peace Be the Journey!

Y is for Your Mama

My kids think I'm hilarious because I always say your mom's ____ after everything they say.  Usually.  Okay, if truth be told, I'm the only one who thinks I'm hilarious; my kids just think I'm annoying.  But if you can't annoy your kids, what's the point of motherhood, so here's how it works.

Kid:  Mom this dinner's hot.

Mom:  Your mom's hot.

Now you're beginning to see how this can be fun and annoying.

Kid:  Mom, does this look cute?

Mom:  Your mom's cute.

You can also annoy other people, like solicitors.

Solicitor:  Is your mom there? (This works if you happen to sound young.)

Mom:  No, she's dead.  (Okay, techinically this isn't a "your mom" response; but it's still fun and annoying and only works if your mom is dead or if you're a liar.)

X is for

A xanthocrhoic, xanthocomic xanthippe.

W is for Whistle

My mom was a whistling sort of woman.  She could emit a piercing sound that could round up stray dogs and stop misbehaving children in their tracks.  Yes sirree, her whistler was a real show stopper, an attention getter.  And when I was 13, that's what I thought I needed--attention--from one particularly tan, shaggy blond haired boy who worked across the street at the farm, usually with his shirt off.  Man could that boy drive a tractor.

I spent most of my summers drooling at him from my bedroom window, or from my horse when I galloped past him with my hair flying behind me, or from the bushes across from his house when I was stalking him. 

Yeah folks, I had the jump on stalking way before Facebook even thought about it.  That's why I needed an attention getter or maybe a life or perhaps a therapist.

So I spent half of the summer of 8th grade learning how to whistle.  I spent the other half of the summer whistling.  At the guy with the sexy tractor.  Or the sexy guy on the tractor.  It's all a blur now. 

In case you're wondering, I did not marry the shirtless boy on the tractor.  In order to marry someone you have to converse with them at least enough to say, I do which happens to be two words more than we ever shared. 

I don't whistle at farm boys on tractors any more mostly because I would get arrested, and I don't live by a farm or a tractor.

But I do break out the "whistler" to get the attention of a dog or two and hush a room full of 7th graders, so my 8th grade summer wasn't a total wash, right?

V is for Vegetarian. .. almost

A decade and a half ago or so our family was at the Happiest Place On Earth and I'm not talking about Costco.  Although when I go there, some people look like they're at the happiest place on earth.  What is so happy about parking a mile away and pushing a cart the size of a flatbed truck through crowded isles and waiting 20 minutes to check out?

Back to the H.P.O.E.--which looks almost like hope only hope is free and H.P.O.E. is the price of one of your kidneys on the black market.  But hey, we've all got two, right?

Anywhoo, after a day of fighting about which rides to go on because we had family one--the 4 kids we had in 4 1/2 years and family 2 the 3 that we had every 3 years after the 4--we were famished and stopped to eat at a chicken place after my husband sold the youngest child to pay for the meal.  Just kidding.  Mostly. 

As we're devouring the chicken, my sweet Cassie turns to me and asks, "Where does chicken come from?"  Uh oh, the Happiest Place on Earth just got a little less cheery. 

What you have to know about Cassie is that she loved animals more than people at that age.  And maybe still at this age.  And that she adopted a stray cat which she named Lucky Chicken.  That about sums it up.

She was so hungry, yet so disturbed.  With tears and big heaving sobs, she ate every bite of that chicken. 

But here's the kicker or the clucker:  After we'd finished eating Cassie said, "Don't you dare throw away those bones!"  She arranged them all carefully on a plate.  We then followed her to a nearby flowerbed where we dug a shallow grave with our heals.  And I don't want to burst your bubble about the H.P.O.E. but there was a r-a-t in that flowerbed.  I saw him with my own eyes while I was burying his lunch 2 inches under. 

After a short graveside service which may have involved some praying, words of thanks to the chicken, and a song or two, we wiped the chicken grease on our pants, rubbed our muddy shoes off in the grass and made our way back to what makes the H.P.O.E. so darn happy, which apparently is not the chicken.

U is for Unity

Sometimes we think life is about getting to the finish line first.  But it's not about "winning."  It's about how we run, and who we run with, and how we help each other along the way.  You've heard it before--united we stand, divided we fall--but seeing it is so much better.

T is for the Tonight Show

My husband is one for putting things out in the universe.  He's pretty good at it.  You can read about it here.  If I put something out in the universe, I'd never be able to find it again because I can't find my way out of a paper bag because I have a little Dori fish (from finding Nemo) swimming around inside my head. 

Ellen Degeneres is also one who believes in putting things out in the universe.  She was not too many years out of high school, living in a lice-infested basement apartment with no heat or air and the only furnishings being a single mattress on the floor when she was driving home from work and saw an accident.  She drove past it and later found out that one of her friends was killed in the accident.  While thinking about how unfair it was that her friend was dead while the horrible fleas in her apartment were still alive, she wrote an imaginary conversation with God where she asked Him this question. 

After she wrote it, she said to herself---to the UNIVERSE, someday I will perform this monologue on the Johnny Carson show.  She wasn't doing comedy at the time and had never done comedy.  A few years later, the universe delivered.

So, what do you want to put out in the universe?

S is for Someday

"Conditions are never perfect.  'Someday' is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.  If it's important to you and you want to do it 'eventually,' just do it and correct course along the way."
                                                                         Tim Ferriss

I've been living for someday for a long time now.  There's never a good time for anything--except to procrastinate.  Someday I'll go back to school; someday I'll write that book; someday I'll clean my house (okay probably not); someday I'll have more time for the people I love. . .

Someday I'll figure out how to get where I want to be without actually doing anything.  Someday.

What's on your someday list?