reap what you sow

so, here i am, thirty five years old, burdened by mental lists which i have complete control over... ok? I have complete control over my own expectations and thought patterns. right? sticks and stones are much friendlier foes than my own stupid brain, i am finding.
I've got no problem with bruises and blisters. Bring it on. I'd enjoy the fight with someone my own size. Saw a gym for women's boxing opening up down the road this week. hm. (if someone hits me in the face who is not a kid of mine, do i get to knock them down?)

this is not where i thought i'd find myself at this age, but I can't remember where I thought I'd be....
So, I have five years to get myself to a place where I am more proud and have more ability to look around with acceptance. Or five weeks, or five minutes. I'm tired of my tired out resentments, they really are 'unreal' and I have the choice to feel them, or to at least, examine them and rather than resent the place I am in, just accept what it is.
sure.
I've been a stay at home mom full time for three and a half years, its the first time since I was fifteen that I haven't worked at a paying job. no biggie, but the whole 'not being paid' thing is actually one of the bugs in my brain. I watch the kids for my payback all the time, the way the youngest one plucks at the skin between my thumb and forefinger is about 12 bucks an hour and when my four year old fiddles with my bellybutton in a flashback to his younger days, thats a bonus check...
I am tired, I slept on the pullout bed last night by myself and it was unbelievably good. but I'm still tired.. I think I've got to pile on some vitamin d or have my iron checked. My life can't actually be this draining, right? Why have I purchased toy hammers for my kids? - was that downright dumb? was it? they are hitting everything! dumb? motherly? do we want to investigate? NO.

lists

mental lists have started to take over my life, I've got to start writing things down... I'm losing track of what is mental and what is practical..what is part of some old dream and what is real.
there were lots of favorite things that happened over this past week though.
there was a snowstorm and I had no place to be. favorite.
there were my sister and brother laughing at my kids. favorite.
there was music at a darkened church and kids holding candles all around.
there was no time to take the perfect photo, the time was full of watching.
There was a cardinal.
There was no vomit, and the struggle to bed was that of a four year old listening for hooves on the roof.
There was surprise and delight at a toy chainsaw. really. it makes sound and moves, ah, bliss.
There was shock and awe that the smell of J's 'new' aftershave made me remember first loving him.
there was melancholy for the girl that I was then. so much of that. so much, it overwhelmed some of my day, i tell you.
there was a good good book, Help. it is done, it was Good.
there was a roaring fire and unwrapped boxes.
there were gifts from afar which were magical in their traveling.
there were whole days when the tv was 'broken'. whole days.
there are more days in which to make more lists, but this is today's. . .

happy eve

i went out this morning to sit on the front steps and have a cigarette. yes, i am still disgusting... HOWEVER, a male cardinal alit on the tree before me and as I believe they are signs of God's humor and Grace, I wish you a very merry christmas and a wonderful moment to moment life in all the holidays and all the regular days that be.

laundry

seriously, who knew there could be this much laundry in my life? I have been curious about the differences between wifing and mothering and which one is harder before, but only lately have I realized that I actually think taking care of the house is my most difficult, ridiculous and offensive job. Yes, I said offensive. I am on the defensive here, so there must be some offense, otherwise I'm just CRAZY. which couldn't be.

In the prep for the big gift-giving bonanza that is about to happen here, I've been trying to straighten up and fly right.... meaning that I need to vacuum and move furniture and I am just freaking bad at this whole deal. I tried to fly with FLYLADY, which is an internet based clean-help type deal and while i love my clean sink, I am just overloaded with culch. Kultch... whathaveyous lying all around and in between. It does not help that my teeny tiny entire house only contains two tall-enough closets (one of them is in the bathroom=no help) . the others are small cubby nooks for old fashioned short people. I am one of those but am quickly being outsized by my children and the piles of said culch...
what to do?
send santa a request for a cleaner? no. the work to prepare for a cleaner would be ridiculous.... a request for a husbandly bathroom clean? maybe... the mania with which he cleans is also ridiculous and puts ALL other things on hold while it is being done, something which a mom with two kids can't really get to do.
so, we may have a cluttered christmas over here. you think the boys will notice if they sit on pine needles to open their gifts? or lean back on a dog-hair covered pillow ?
hm.

wooden food

My four year old has just made me a tray full of sliced food, wooden variety platter as it were. He is foresaking naps these days and while I recognize that i AM very lucky that he has taken them for four years, I am completely unconvinced that I am going to survive his transition into kidhood. He is growing right now, I think.. refusing most food and getting real skinny and I am watching him grow up suddenly and I think his conceptual understanding of the world is exploding. He is clingy and full of whine and I think he has recognized that his parents are fallible, vulnerable and so on and so forth and I just am spinning as I watch him do the same... He has just climbed into my lap to "feed" me so I am finishing off the post with one finger. He really is the wonder of my days, sometimes.
I am bulky with food. nourished.

snowed in...

i am always so happy when there is a snowed-in day on the weekend... it makes it so wonderful for all the people who don't have to work, or think about getting to work... I know there are multitudes who are still trying to get there or who are so scared to lose the salary for the day, but here we are... the whole family is home and the cars are tucked away in the neighbors drives (we have no driveway and there is a parking ban so the plows can ostensibly plow -they avoid our street anyways.. but the tickets for leaving your car out are a stiff hundred) and shoveling doesn't even need to happen til naptime... its just great. the kids have been out, my older son thinks its time for a 'sweat' and is running around naked in front of the fireplace/stove... and we have electricity, so i am sitting here in front of the bluelight of the computer, posting so i can go make hot chocolate while still reaching out to the snowbound, computerhappy people that i know...
happy snowed in day...
wifemother

not a nut

I have to say, with all the holiday party that i can stand having just finished... i am not a christmas nut. I admit, I do decorate the day after Thanksgiving, and this year, I had my Santas in place while the turkey was roasting... and I do love Christmas, the actual holiday celebrating a humble birth.... can you believe that? under all that has come since that time? a humble birth?
but anyhow, i digress... I am not a Christmas nut. And I am not talking about people who love to decorate or who are naturally effervescent or passionate, I am talking about the people who think that Christmas (HOLIDAY) parties for preschoolers are a good time. who /why ? I am pleased to announce that I was the last to arrive (due to a near heart attack trying to find a place to park my in-laws TOWNCAR/smallyacht in an urban environs) and the first to go. I could not find HO-HOs.... so I left my two bags of donettes happily swimming amidst the homemade cupcakes that looked like penguins... really. Do you think Donettes feel insignificant next to their homemade rivals? I think the Donettes are roller derby girls, having a riot of a time in their bag with a window... who wants to be pigeonholed in a cupcake holder, anyhow? c'mon.
My kid was overwhelmed too. Handed me his half-eaten donette and read a book while the hundreds of hordes sang their 'name song'...
I LOVE pulling glitter from a dubious ornament out of my kids hair because they've been playing in the corner behind the tree. I LOVE THAT.
I am filled with wonder at the beauty of our christmas tree, every single year, for as long as I can remember.
and I love church on Christmas Eve, it honestly feels like magic and I think its probably in any church, anywhere. O Come Let Us Adore Him' makes me cry, every time.
So. I like it, I admit, but I am going to stay home until the furor out there has passed. right.

let me tell you what

there will be no cookies this year. no cookies.
unless they come from the elves of keebler.
there are many reasons for this but mostly it is my derriere and my realization that this belly i now own is not going away unless i take a decisive action.
another set of reasons would be the two boys in my life who could fight over which shade of blue the sky would be, if you could in fact see it through the murk... all they want to do is press the buttons on the blender and you know what? that has catastrophe written ALL over it. SO. no cookies. keebler elves.
AND, they've both vomited in the past four days and yet again, i am tired. It seems like we are done with the vomits and just in time for the 'holiday' party... sometimes i am just tireed of people not being willing to acknowledge the overwhelming nature of the christmas thing... i'm supposed to make food and I think I may challenge the attachment parenting crowd and provide hohos in a box, making my own extremely witty pun on the whole santa/holiday thing...and now I can't find where the vomit smell is coming from and this makes me very concerned...
and i'm sorry about all the ellipses... sees... what have you... just can't be bothered.

keebler. take me away

Spidey sinew...

Batty's final resting place... would you just look at spidey's legs for a minute here.... this particular toy is jointed all the way down to the toes. seriously, a fabulous resting place for my man Bat. Carol did a check for me on what I expected from a man. Basically, it seems, I'd like to be married to my grandmother. I want someone as a helper, a blanket on my legs whilst I while away the hours by the fire... etc. A cat, maybe. Sex aside, if you can, how many of you out there think you'd like to be domestically partnered with a woman, for the ease of the thing... ? I understand that sex is a big thing to get around, and only occasionally would I want to admit how rarely I even get to experience it, certainly not enough to make it a blog SUBJECT like ms. athena... but geez. (It IS absolutely fabulous, just increasingly unsimple). My childhood dream of entering a convent (yes, i really did, i think it had something to do with the quiet and simple and no, i'm not now nor never have been Roman Catholic...) now has begun to make a lot more sense again... the dream of disappearing... sinking into the simple.

guess who is not feeling very wonderful anymore? the drawback to carol's bathing me in goodness is that showers lose some of their potency... and the next day is always a bitch. and i'm talking publicly about joining a convent or marrying a woman for ease of homelife. my husband LOVES that I blog. LOVES IT.

holy pressure

how does one do this? athena gave me a lovely blog award with rules attached...ark...

and it took me far too long to figure out how to plug it up there but i do know i thank her while grimacing and gritting my teeth because i have felt like such a fake lately and if i knew her personally and could reach her, i'd pinch her shapely arm.

but i am not a fake, i've just been doing the keeping quiet thing ... hubby and i have had one of those experiences that leave a pit of fear and uncertainty in your belly, at least mine... and i am so glad to be on the 'almost' other side of it and I am glad that I saw Chakra Carol today because I feel like I've had the most wonderful bathing time, and my eyes are open to what goodness I have in me, and I'm probably wicked awesome and you really really love me .
hee heeyah. seriously, I feel wonderfully and it is such a welcome change to what I've been doing in this last week . ah, the one certainty is change, right? I bet I'm a better mom than I think I am. I know I'm a better protector than I thought I was... i love my kids and I'm realizing how central they have become to my identity. Not the individuals themselves, but to the part of me that DOES find fulfillment in watching them grow and play... in my own development, they are here and they are forces of life to be reckoned with... and how I deal with them and with my husband is my choice. and all about me, in the end. so who do i want to be? who am i? well.

to follow the rules of the blog award: here are seven things you don't know about me... I make no promises about their interest level, just fulfilling a rule.

1. My first son is named after a very famous musician.

2. My second son is named after a very famous and very stern prophet.

3. I don't read my own posts after they are gone, (so I may have said their names earlier... )

4. I haven't vaccinated my children against anything except tetanus and the meningitis thing.

5. My middle name is my Grandmother's maiden name and I love it to pieces : Hall

6. I love Lloyd Dobbler but would burn his coat and sneakers.

7. I accept without sadness that the part of me that was filled up with joy at John Huston movies is gone.

so there. now I have to pass the award on to five other blogs, which is something I'm going to pass on... I know, like a bad chain letter follower - I am risking all sorts of juju here. but go check out the ones I follow, they are all so wonderful... I like 'this new place' lately... and 'diagnosis:urine' ... And MamaMama and Cheerio Road and The Middle Bit and russell's, if he ever ever posted anything... and I award them... wonderfull-ness all around. anyhow... go looking. there's a lot out there.

love and good juju to you all.

wifemother

so ballsy

well, so much for the daily posting idea. i had forgotten that 'tis the season means that preschoolers are crazed with energy and, evidently, aggression towards their mothers. merry christmas.
also, i've been just overwhelmed by my own life. and because i have been asked and agreed not to share marital stuff here, i feel somewhat stilted and can only complain wierdly and vaguely and its unsettling and whiney to do that. It comes down to being too simpleminded to split myself into categories. there is only one , and having a private life/secret makes me feel all split up, even if its just a secret from bloggoramaville.
also, i've not slept for two nights because the birthday boy decided to get a fever and start throwing up when all the grandparents were sitting around the cake. really. timing is everything... he didn't even get to rip wrapping paper. poor baby.
i smell like vomit.
i did manage to finish my mother's stocking, and the one i promised my niece's mother a full year ago. afullyear.
i go see chakracarol tommorow, so i should have something to say.
unless i fall asleep and miss the whole thing. which is certainly not impossible.

old timer

today was my day to spend in the four year old classroom... love it, glad i don't have to do it for my job anymore and even more glad that i am not the mom to all those kids - just my own small blond hysteric.

but my favorite little girl in the class (and I mean it, she's my favorite... not all are created alike and i am not saying anythingabout all the others but man, she is so damn different and wildlyoriginal its hard to imagine she'll ever be a barbie and that makes me so so happy. ) anyh0ow, miss f. was listening to the teachers story about st. lucia day and how the oldest girl children in the family are responsible for wearing this cool candle headgear and she was upset a bit and kept saying 'I am not Ooold' ... for she is the oldest girl in her family...

and so now I am going to say it, because I think I'd like to be her someday... I am not old. I do not have a thickening middle. I do not cry during yoga. I do not cry on the inside of my face in order to hide from my children my complete emotional wreck self. I do not and I am not old.

I am not.

and there are some days I really buy it, but I think I need to swing to the positive and I am just feeling today and this week as if my feet are on shifting sands and my inability to get a firm foothold is wrecking my armswide float... too many analogies? or maybe i've just made a mistake. firm footholds and catching breezes are not necessarily on the same page of my thesaurus. perhaps I want to wear shoes this winter and someone has knocked off my clog. That bare nugget out there is getting cold and I wish I could get him to put my shoe back where it belongs.

Life is what it is, and ever changing and I want to think its perfect as it is, but I am not there. My toes are cold and I want coverage. ya dig?

back on the wagon

I've been thinking about re-committing to the daily posting idea, even though its no longer noppopo or whatever. I found it really fulfilling to get comments, to see that people were checkin in... I liked having a goal and achieving it, damnit . :)
Yes, it sucked away my time, but should I be spending all my time doing laundry for other people? feeding other people? what?! It is something for me while I figure out this family thing, the marriage thing and the wild and crazy idea that next year I will have two kids in school and two whole mornings per week with nobody to take care of. I have a hard time believing that, but there it is. I won't even have a babysitter anymore. increable.
I've finished Olive Kittredge and liked it quite a bit but also found the ending frustrating, as i tend to with endings these days. too quick, too neat, too banal.
I'm working now on the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, which I like a lot for its adventure and mystery and I haven't reached the end yet so can't tell what it will hold.
look at me, ma... i'm reading...
wish david could serenade me with 'changes' right now.
but no, dragon train is on instead... i mean, dinosaur train.

you can't get a box o' hohos at cvs. (ramble)

really, its true. i love me some hohos. really, most favorite would have to be the cupcakes with the lacey curly q's on top... but no. no boxes. and in this time of strife, i want a box. A BOX. I would even take twinkies. or laffy taffy... anything with obscene ingredient lists and topped with sugar would do.

today was a snow day but nothing was cancelled, i just kept the kids home and let them play in the almost 4 inch accumulation that already is being turned into slushmuck... well, we had our first authentic snowball fight and the little one had his first experience with cold pinkfingers. it was a joy and we came in to make popcorn and watch sesame street. c'mon, you love it, you want to be me. you do. you probably Are me. thats my guess... a world of mirrors out there. it would make sense.
except for all the wackos. except for them.

Icarus

I can't remember if Icarus bites it in the end, I'm sure he does because the myths are not exactly PC stories for today's intellectual pansified children... but I've been raising boys in a windstorm lately and Icarus is on my mind. The glory of the dream, the dream of acquisition, adventure, exploration, ownership and mindblowing experience ... and the slow melt of reality and the inevitable crash when we realize we are not 18 anymore, we cannot do magic like in the movies, and we may not, in fact, be the good guys.
Icarus, where are you now? Had you learned the lesson that has been preached about you all these years? or was the fall as glorious as the upswing?

*edit: Icarus is the dad, Daedalus, the son...

so sorry

everything around here is so sorry lately. the strain is freaking unbearable. This marriage relationship is private, deeply private but it is leeching out like a bad dye job, which makes sense to me as its such a big part of my life. . but I am tired and home is where the heart is and all that. *I'm not a very nice person when it comes right down to it, I think. what used to be attractive in all that wit and reparte is just not attractive anymore.

but! silver lining is that babyboy#2 had his ears checked today and he got the all clear. and i am so relieved that I want to vomit all over the place. really.(it is worthy of a large cosmic smile) I can't tell you how much it will kill me if I have passed something on to them that is like what I have . . . I am supposed to be their protector, as C says...
*and I need to call Carol, again...
i need a resting place. no kids and no husband and since yoga has started to make me cry, and I want to stop smoking, I'm not sure where to go for it. or how to take care of myself in a more meaningful and sustaining way.

problems of duality and a loss of humor

i think the problem is the twosidedness of me. in general, hearing goofiness aside, i present as a common sensical straightforward woman. with maybe some sharp edges. inside, as in, currently, i am a lump... with little prospect of cleaning up into some David type miracle. all i want to do is crawl into a hole and stay there and it really doesn't make for a happy home and its been a couple days now. I do get out of the hole, but spend a lot of time thinking about how to get back. I'm taking the kids stuff (the stuff: scratching biting almost two and a freshtalking, whining, striking out four) WAY too personally, and thats the sign to me that I am off my game yet again... there has to be some sort of cycle that i am in, the moon turning me all werewolfian as I am getting so damn angry at my kids instead of my husband and i keep wanting all these good things/ good parenting skills and yet I just can't get myself to that place and keep hanging around all angry and pissy all the good goddamned time.

I fully admit that I cannot manage our current bedtime arrangement on my own. I am overstressed about it and every single night has become a thing of dread. Tall boy of mine is a powerhouse of will and while that makes me proud on the one hand, on the other hand I am slapping myself all night long. He IS sleeping in his own bed now, but not going to sleep until 9:30 or 10 pm and he is completely foregoing naps and I cannot stand the sound of his voice as he whines for the last hour of the ridiculous 'bedtime routine'. yes, i did type HOUR. seriously, I cannot stand to hear the voice and I am worried that I will lose my hearing again because I am challenging a gift of the universe. boy, i would be screwed. and that is a monumental understatement, with no humor of any type involved.

can't watch tv

on fridays my older boy goes to school and stays 'late', so i have until almost two o'clock with just the young one. we putz, do some coloring or playdough and I watch some tv that usually comes on after 8 at night, at which point I am usually a mean zombie mom with no selfcontrol so i am on the way to bed... or to 'bedtime' which is quickly becoming the dungeon of my nights...think chains and moldy bread.
anyhow. with the exception of sitcoms or fashion shows, all the things that I think I am going to enjoy are filled with violence, foreboding, grotesquery, or aggression. It makes the world look so unbelievably scary and I am not in a place to be able to handle it. At first glimpse, these adult shows look sort of like adventures or mysteries to be figured out as we are allowed more and more information or development, and they are well written because we are on the edge of our seats. but why are they so dark? is this how we, in the post 9-11 world, seeing our Selves or our men? the only time there is a full light on a face is when its a woman, and there is also a shot of her perfect legs somehow...
do we, as a tv watching society, think our men are shadowy figures? tricksters? masters of manipulation? slaves to their demons? liars? is yours? is mine? those deep foreboding wells of aggression- are they what lurks behind...?
I can't do it anymore. I'm sticking with Project Runway. otherwise, my dreams of running with scissors make me a wacko unfulfilled. :)

Farmville is for girls

Ok. I play the stupidest game in the world. really. and what is most embarassing is that I know lots and lots of smart other people who do it to, and I think there are multiple layers of too much thinking that have enabled me to say, farmville is for girls.

there is no competition but you can see other farms and judge their setups...

things will wither if you do not tend them at regularly scheduled times...

you grow whatever you like, can pick 'perfect' bouquets and share them and yet, cannot actually 'make' anything with what you grow, or eat it.

also, for all the moms out there who feel unrewarded by all of the child raising they are doing, you get ribbons as you grow more and more. ribbons!

and there is money up the wazoo that you can buy decorations with. money. wazoo.

plus, nobody chases you down the street if your strawberries wither on the vine. or calls DSS if you forget to buy eggs for breakfast.

my almost two year old loves to hear the sheep low and the ducks quack.

family values, family values.

Spidey is afraid

Spidey is frozen in his 'alert' mode, suction cups at the ready...

today is quite a bleak day weather wise, and at the end of yoga I was crying. luckily for me and my privacy issues, everyone had their eyes closed so I may have gotten away with it. Its a crap day and I have a headache. suction cups at the ready. . . I would like someone to remove my frontal lobe. I've been having these weird swings of anxiety in which I see something horrible happening to one of my kids or my husband... and I'm awake, daydreaming- so I am aware of choice and mindfulness being turned off because these things are allowed into my day visions. I'm not worried that I am suddenly psychic, I'm just not feeling mindful and therefore out of my body and elsewhere. like those beige pants up there, i'm starchly polyester. maybe that was my stripper name, Starchly Polyester. seems fitting, in a nonfitting way.

(addendum: full moon and ovulation make her INSANE.)

sidetracked

one of the downfalls to this whole daily posting thing is that i really haven't done anything else with all those minutes to spare that I have... so today i put out the santas and gave the sewing machine a work out and almost finished two year-old gifts. seriously, a year old. but - almost finished and i even started something before the twoyearold menace approached the quickly moving needle at a very fast pace...

i am going to miss the feeling that someone knows what pieces of my life are like. this 'stay at home mom' thing is so damn isolating. damnit.

ah.

goodnight.