Lately I’ve been all muddled up inside my mind and I find it hard to focus on the good things. Or sometimes anything.
My friend Beth Anne wrote a post yesterday about loving your reality and it really worked for me. There are a number of factors standing in my way at the moment, none of which are at all interesting or even remotely important and I need to recognize them for the trivial problems that they are and deal with them appropriately. And by “deal with” I mean ignore because giving them all of this attention in my head only makes them seem important.
I was reminded the other night of a song we used to sing in Sunday School when I was little, “Count Your Blessings”.
I have a boatload of blessings. Yes I have challenges, but my bills are paid, there’s food in my cupboards and everyone who lives here is healthy and safe. You know who can’t say that? Almost anyone who lives in Pakistan. Or Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or Haiti.
If I look around my life and see things missing or lacking, then it’s up to me to fix them. And there’s no one to blame but myself when at the end of the day those same things are in an unchanged state. No.One.
I think I’ve been stuck in over analysis mode again, when what I really need to do is close my eyes and jump into one of the 50 things that I want to do something about and then just freaking DO something already. It doesn’t matter which of the 50 things it is, either. Momentum is not built by deciding which rock to push downhill first, it is created when a rock starts moving. SO MOVE IT ALREADY, LADY.
Yes I’m shouting at myself. It’s my blog and I say I’m allowed therefore I AM ALLOWED. I make the rules, see? That’s the whole point of this entire post; I MAKE THE RULES. My dreams and ambitions will rise and fall with the attention that I give to them and it’s time to start doing instead of thinking.
Piper and I are chilling in our jammies today while she gets over some kind of upset tummy thing. She’s enjoying playing library and watching PBS.
Meanwhile I’m enjoying finishing all the mashed potatoes she’s refused to eat, and we’re both enjoying the extra snuggles that come with sick days.
Imagine my dismay when I hit up the Lowes last week to check out some seeds for our fall garden, only to find that they PULLED ALL VEGETABLE SEEDS the week before. Because they are idiots.
I asked one of the garden center idiots where the seeds were. It was a great conversation and I don’t want to deny you, my readers, the idiocy that is a central Florida home improvement store garden center employee’s FLAWLESS LOGIC. Here you go:
Me: Excuse me, can you tell me where the vegetable seeds are? I didn’t find then inside by the entrance where they usually are.
Stupid: Oh they don’t keep them out here because they’ll sprout or something. They keep them inside by the carts.
Me: (Long pause) Yes. I know. But they aren’t there NOW is what I’m saying. Can you tell me if they’ve been moved?
Stupid: They pulled them off the floor last week.
Me: Ok. Why?
Stupid: Well it’s really pretty late to plant things you know, it’s almost September and it gets cold soon.
Me: Actually, it’s coming up on a great time to plant, and it doesn’t get “cold” here for about 4 or 5 more months and even then it doesn’t get that cold. Also? Why do you have so many started vegetable plants out front if it’s too late to plant? You have shelves and shelves of tomatoes and peppers and corn and cucumbers and strawberries. It’s obviously not too late.
Stupid: Well they’re trying to push those plants then so they took the seeds away so people would have to buy the plants from us.
Me: What about all the things I want to grow that you don’t have started?
Stupid: What do you want to grow? Maybe we have some seeds coming in.
Me: (Long pause. Indignant stare.) It really would have been ok for you to say “I don’t know” when I first asked the question.
Stupid: (As I walk away) Well they used to keep them inside.
And then my head exploded. I’m still trying to decide if it was because of the heat or the stupid.
If I end up having to go to WalMart I may go back and murder that girl. And then I’ll probably get extradited to Norway or wherever the hell that chick is from, because she’s obviously not from here, where it doesn’t get cold until Christmas IF WE’RE LUCKY.
More and more I find that I’m considering the different skills that Topher and I bring to the parenting table.
He’s a great playmate for Piper, seriously great at just sitting on the floor with her and getting into whatever little game she might be creating. Don’t get me wrong, he has moments when he phones it in like all parents do, making sure she doesn’t electrocute herself and not much else, but more often than not he’s really great about really playing with her.
I don’t think I’m as great of a playmate, truth be told, although I find myself engaging with her more as she picks up more words and becomes a more verbal communicator.
Let’s be honest, I’m a talker.
But there’s another piece to it. When I see her playing with her books by herself, making up little stories and talking to herself, I don’t feel the need to disturb her. I don’t see a child playing alone as a person in need of companionship or interruption. I enjoy solitude and always got along alright without playmates. Piper talked up a storm on vacation, lots more than she usually does at daycare. Sometimes I think she enjoys having some quiet space around her and I want to respect her need to decompress a bit because I think that space gives her the opportunity to develop in other areas that can be stifled by daycare.
But. I have no idea how her life will change someday when we bring another baby home (People? No misunderstandings here: Today is not that day. Neither is 9 months from today. Simmer down.) and she has to be a big sister. Someday she’s going to have to deal with another little person who, from what I understand of younger siblings, is going to want to be all up in her business.
I’m not going to know what to do with that. I mean, at all. My advice will probably alternate between “Be nice to your baby brother, he’s littler than you and just wants to do everything you do because he thinks you’re so great!” and “Dude, I don’t know what to tell you. You might try locking him in the attic, or tying him up. Sorry Mommy can’t be of more help.”.
So. I’m glad she’ll have Topher for advice in that realm.
And she can always come to me when her high school friends make fun of her for carrying a book with her everywhere she goes.
I already have lots of practice with that one.
One of the highlights at BloghHer ‘10 for me was the last night, and a little (Ha!) party called SparkleCorn. I started the party off right, getting water spit in my face by one of my favorite people because apparently my just-standing-here-waiting-for-mandy-to-come-dance-with-me-face is so hilarious that people can’t be view it and keep their beverages in their mouths simultaneously. I wrapped things up nice and tight with Amanda and a very kind bartender working diligently to clean up the red wine I spilled all over the top of my dress. Yes I was still wearing it. You don’t leave a party like this to clean yourself up, you just stay and dance with wine all over yourself. Also, if you leave early you miss excellent opportunities to force feed cigarettes to unicorns and steal posters of Dwight Schrute to wear as skirts to the next party.
If you’re not as disturbingly obsessed with the magic that is the internet as I am you’re probably wondering what a sparklecorn is. It’s pretty obvious though, right? It’s a combination of sparkles and unicorns, aka everything awesome about the web. The cake should make it all clear if you’re still confused.
It was hands down, no apologies, THE BEST PARTY I have ever been to in my entire life. Yes. This does include every party that you have ever thrown that I attended. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but it’s true.
If you want to see a video of what the party was like go here and keep an eye out for yours truly shortly after the 1 minute mark. Please be advised if you’re someone’s grandmother, there’s a lot of cussing in the song the video is set to. If you’re still game, dig it. If you’re at work plug your headphones in and check it out. I’ve watched it three times and every time it makes me want to buy my BlogHer’11 ticket right now. Which I actually might do.
One of my favorite parts of the party was dancing on stage with my roommates. While we were up there I watched Mandy make out with a Barack Obama cardboard cutout right before Beth Anne made a rude gesture (the kind you don’t generally expect to see from a proper southern lady) in his general direction while yelling her political affiliation. In another environment you might expect a moment like that to put a damper on the super happy friend fun party vibe. But here? Not so much. About 30 seconds later I caught them doing this:
My least favorite moment…? I had two. I met two bloggers I read faithfully and was extremely excited to meet. But by the time I met them I was so brain dead and overstimulated that all Loralee heard was a stuttering “I love you” and Becky got stuck with “OhmiGod you’re awesome”. I blame the fact that I had just spent 10 minutes chatting with the delightful and not at all scary Jill and apparently, that was all the brainpower I had left for the night.
I blame Jen and her spitting tendencies. God knows I didn’t drink any more after the Club Soda Assault Of 2010.
