25
November
A Pretty Good Monday
This is how we spent our Monday.
Can you guess whose house we’re going to for Thanksgiving? We brought Cousin Stomach Bug too, so that just doubles the fun…
24
November
An Orange State of Mind
I wrote this post last weekend on a road trip to Clemson, but time constraints and computer issues have delayed its posting. Here’s what was on my brain…
Orange!
Chris and I have brought our girls to their first Clemson experience. I sit here illuminated only by the light of the computer screen while my sweet fam is tuckered out in the two double beds of our hotel room (thank you, Starwood points).
I graduated from Clemson in 1995, and, for me, there is no other place like it. My first year there was the worst year of my entire life, and I tried my dead-level best to transfer to Wofford – all to no avail. I didn’t adapt well to being a minnow in an ocean, but it was good for me in some ways. It was awful for me in others, but I digress. Hundreds of poor choices aside, I came to love this place! As I drive through intersections and step in my own footsteps from those years and as I remember certain booths and sandwiches from favorite restaurants, I can easily slip back into her. For moments at the time I can walk in the past. This campus is my fountain of youth. My body instinctively hunches over under the burden of my brown suede bag and my calves burn in the car just remembering the hill to Clemson House. My hair grows inches by the minute and my stomach growls for pizza and Taco Bell. I stroll by buildings and hear thirteen year-old conversations and lectures. I see places, and detailed memories of mundane experiences roll on my screen. I never knew the clock on Tillman Hall is pointless; time doesn’t exist here.
I’m in an orange state of mind…
Chris says, “Go Dabo!”
20
November
Ouch! Yeah, the truth…
Hurts 🙁 I value truth. I am not always jazzed about the truth, and I often can’t swallow it very easily. But I do try to be sensitive and open to encounters with it – even when its taste is offensive and bitter.
Monday was one of those days where I had a week’s worth of obligations crammed into one day – all fun stuff that I was excited to do but still just one of those days when life and circumstances and responsibilities ask a lot of you. I am sad to say that I can even sweat the fun stuff. So when I have to go without an interval of collection and reflection during the day, I am a terror. Hence, on these occasions I judiciously limit interaction with others. Unfortunately my fam doesn’t enjoy that option. On Monday the girls and I were a train wreck. We sassed each other; we spoke sharply and negatively; we were eating each other alive. And I just found myself at a complete loss for what to do. The girls weren’t obeying me; they were yelling at each other non-stop, and I was doling out punishments left and right. I was at a loss…
Out of pure desperation, I asked the girls to come sit with me in the floor to pray – during which time I began to cry. If they thought I was nuts, they didn’t say so, but things improved after that. Tuesday was phenomenally better! I praised Carson at bedtime for her improved attitude, and you know what she said to me. She said, “You just needed to get it together and then we would.” Oh, yes she did…
I patiently retracted my compliment, addressed her insubordination, and accepted her apology. But it was not until this morning when I was asking God for the grace and the patience and the forgiveness and the wisdom to parent today that I realized that Carson had nailed me with truth last night. Though her tone and intentions were disrespectful and unappreciated, she was dead on. She spoke truth to me, and I will choose to receive it.
I taught high school long enough to know that on days I walked in with a crummy attitude it was invariably reciprocated by my students. I set the tone for interaction in my classroom. I set the tone for interaction within my family.
That’s not to say that I won’t totally bomb tomorrow, but at least I can come at this issue with a little different perspective.
Ah yeah, sometimes the truth does hurt…
18
November
This is what happens when…
…you pierce your nose as a 35 year-old totally conservative mom. Remind me that I’m okay with this when she’s eighteen and I’m fifty.
13
November
R.I.P. CPU
So here I sit. As I do every Thursday. It’s dancing day. And we have dancing from 2:30-5:30 with one thirty-minute break in the middle that requires mom supervision. It’s my least fave day because I feel like I “waste life” each week as I try to quickly dash to run an errand here and there with three year-old in tow and get back before jazz class ends. Then four of us cram into the car (we have a friend with us) and munch snacks and watch about fifteen minutes of a movie, swap shoes, and run back in for ballet. It’s so fragmented and chaotic, headache-inducing, and unproductive. I take a healthy overdose of Extra-Strength Tylenol before we leave the house and try to roll with it.
Today we ended up with two overturned cans of soda, one monkey who scrambled to the back of the car refusing to get out for ballet, and one sitting helplessly in the middle totally unable to find her shoes (yep, she’s mine).
There’s really nothing that awful about it; it’s just that everything about it is so contrary to what I prefer.
So today, as I wait, I half-heartedly mourn the untimely death of my desktop hard drive. Frizzled. Frazzled. Fried. Though its unexpected passing has me concerned about my i-Tunes library, hundreds of pics, and many Word documents that have not been responsibly backed-up, the hubster’s flippant mention of a laptop has me not so heartsick after all.
‘Cause then I could blog and stalk during the dancing wait. Though my posts might turn into the dancing doldrums every week. So, consider yourself forewarned. If the laptop comment does come to fruition (doubtful at best), you may want to skip reading on Thursday 🙂
So, what do you really do when you have to wait and don’t want to “waste life”?
