Single Red Tulip

I was driving to a meeting last Thursday when I saw a large bed full of yellow tulips. Mixed in was a single red tulip. I smiled as I considered how it stood out against a sea of yellow tulips, all the same. I wondered how it came to be. Had a squirrel dug it up from a neighboring garden and dropped it off there, realizing that it was indeed not a nut that he could consume? Perhaps the tulip was planted there previously and when they were dug up this one missed the train? Is it possible for a tulip to change it's color? Chameleon tulip?

I smiled as I considered how much that tulip reminds me of myself. I feel like I don't quite fit in among any group of other individuals. I don't really know that any one fits in everywhere but I oftentimes feel like I don't fit anywhere.

Don't get me wrong. I have loving, accepting, and nurturing family, friends, and groups across the spectrum. I have a close knit group of religious friends who don't agree with me crediting the Universe with Gods plan. I have a family that doesn't support equal rights as much as they accept it. I have mom friends who think I am a good mother despite disagreeing with some of the methods I use. We may all be cut from the same, or similar cloth but I am always just slightly outside of the pattern.

I am that red tulip. I stand proudly as a single red tulip. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Cards

My Mother in law passed away on Sept. 13th, 2012. She was a neat lady. I'll be honest. She kinda drove me crazy. She continues to do so from beyond the grave. It makes me smile. :)

My husband and I started working with my father in law to purge the plethora of things that my mother in law had held onto over the years. Dang did that woman like things! My father in law says that she's never had a yard sale so this is over 40 years of accumulation. It's going to be long road ahead.

One of the things my mother in law was known for was her correspondence. She was very proper and timely with her thank you cards, and salutations.

I am not.

So, for 2013 I vow to improve upon my severely lacking correspondence skills. I vowed to send out one card a week. The reason is quite comical. I have found stacks and stacks of greeting cards. Some as old as the seventies. This is normally the type of thing I would not hesitate to donate or recycle but for some reason...I just couldn't do it. As I looked at the stacks and stacks of cards I said to the air "FINE! I will send the damn cards!"

Seriously I don't know why this woman had so many cards! Happy 9th birthday. Congrats on your baby girl.  It's amazing you're under sixty?

Seriously...I could spend a lifetime trying to unload all of these cards.

So here's the deal. I'm finding reason to send out a damn card every week, bare minimum. If you receive an old worn down card that looks like it sat on a shelf for 3 decades....it probably has. Don't wonder why I didn't spring for a new card. Just know that you are playing a role in my mother in law's fun...torturing me to be better.

Okay, so I will admit SOME of these cards are pretty awesome. I'm not a greeting card person but I can see how one might be tempted to buy a really cool card without exactly knowing who it will go to, or when. This is not a habit that this hoarder care's to pick up!

If you were directed here because you received one of Nancy's cards please leave a comment! I'd love to have that motivation to keep the goal going!
 

I'm lost

I've been puttering around with this in my mind for a long time. A very long time. In part because I'm still not so convinced that I know what I am going to do but also because I feel like once you say something out loud you feed that beast and speaking of it gives it life. It also creates accountability. Expectation. Judgement.

I am not interested in any of that. I am interested in getting better. Happier. I am lost and I need to find me again. I've spent so many years of this life on auto pilot and honestly...it pisses me off. I would tell any one of my friends exactly what they can do to find out who they are but I seem to lack the ability to actually do it for myself.

The thing is...I feel like I don't know how to be me anymore. Or maybe it's that I don't know who I am now. Maybe I'm not who I used to be. I mean...people change overtime, right? Scorned by life's betrayal. I suppose that I am both burnt out and bored with life.

I am disinterested in life. That is a very scary and powerful place to be. Reckless abandon. I am beginning to care less and less about everything these days. In some ways this is good. In other ways...notsomuch.

Most days I feel like I am suffering from identity crisis. When something attracts me I find myself questioning every little thing. Am I attracted to this because it is a reflection of me? Or is it because this is what I think society thinks that a wife and mother of four should have/wear.be? Is the attraction a subconscious sabotage working deep in the back of my mind? Why did I attract this person/place/thing into my world? What purpose does it serve.

I am starting to question if I have found my way into a hole that I cannot dig myself out of. I have always been able to resurface from the lows but this time...I kinda just don't want to.

I'm just tired, and I feel like I just need to rest. I know that going away is not going to solve any of my first world problems but sometimes I just want to run away, even if just for a little while.

Who's bringing the presents?!?

I would first like to say blessed winter solstice to you! We are a secular family and celebrate on this day with 4 gifts for each of our 4 children. They each received a want, a need, a wear, and a read. The something they want is usually the latest and greatest electronic device in which I am less than thrilled about. The need is usually something lame like socks, pajamas, coat, etc. The wear is usually a new outfit unless they have a specific clothing item that they have outgrown. Lastly the read, my favorite, is usually a book, or magazine subscription.

This is how we have celebrated for about 4 years now. On December 25th we wake up to stockings filled with small toys and sweet treats. No gifts. No Santa. Just a simple morning with the family before we load up our sleigh to go to grandmas.

With that said we've not really ever played Santa. We've never spoken of him coming down the chimney or any such thing. The kids don't sit on his lap at the mall and ask for toys. It's just never been something that I felt good about. Besides...I kind of want credit for what money we put into their new gadgets and don't want anyone thinking "Santa can just bring a new one next year."

This morning something strange happened. My TEN year old just walked into our bedroom as asked when we would open gifts. I explained that FedEx was bringing his sisters gifts and that as soon as they arrived we would open gifts as a family. He looked at me and said "I thought that Santa just gave the gifts to you." and I asked "What?" and I sat there in my bed just as confused as he was.

I didn't know what to say. I'm not one to crush peoples fake dreams. I just reminded him that today is not Christmas and that Christmas is on December 25th. I reminded him that we open stockings on Christmas morning.

I'm really not sure what to think. It seems as though he has picked up on the concept of Santa from his peers. That in and of itself is not shocking. It's the fact that he is TEN years old. The age when so many kids stop believing is when my kid starts? I'm really not sure what to do about this?

Thoughts?

Sharing on Facebook

Sometimes I post things on Facebook and I think to myself that perhaps I should have blogged about that topic. I feel like I sometimes become discouraged to write at all on Facebook. There is such a range of personalities on there and so many differing opinions. While this is, what I believe, makes our world so fantastic, it feels a little too overwhelming to me, at times.

Sometimes I just need to say it out loud and I'm not necessarily looking for feedback and then my wall blows up with reaction from everyone from family, to classmates, and friends. Particularly the moms. The moms can be very strongly opinionated about things like shopping carts not being placed into the coral and people pooping in public.

So, I am considering taking a bit of a break from Facebook posting. Maybe I should try to blog more, and Facebook less often. All the LOL'ing and heart shaped emoticons are starting to bore me anyway.

The thing is...I am not a writer. I write how I speak, and I have piss poor grammar, and I like run on sentences because that is how my brain thinks, and I really have zero desire to go back to English class. It's just not really important to me today. Maybe tomorrow? Anyway my point is that I have more grammar nazi friends than not, and I am sure that there heads might explode in attempt to read my posts, especially on a bad day.

But...blogging is for me, not them, right? So, I guess I should really not bother myself with what others think about my horrible writing skills and just put it out there.

2013 may be a very interesting year. We'll see...

Learning and Loving Through Loss

I've experienced a fair amount of loss this year. My best friend lost her brother at 40 years old in what I can only loosely refer to as complications from a Motorcycle accident. My Mother in-Law passed away unexpectedly after a medical procedure. A friend from our local moms group lost her son to murder just a few days ago. It's been a lot of loss for just about a 6 week period. I'm spent.

I opened up my navigation system to type in the address for Bradley's visitation today. There on the screen are the last 4 locations I typed in, 3 of them funeral homes. It's too much. I just really really don't want to have to say anymore goodbyes for a while.

In talking with my children this evening about life, spirituality, and death it occurred to me that it might be time to speak to the kids, in greater length, about paying final respects, what that means and how/why it is done.

I also spoke with them about making choices. About not settling for mediocrity. About always striving to do their best, and aiming a little higher the next time. I talked to them about the importance of being patient with one another, and themselves. I'm pretty sure that half of what I said was lost on them but I tried to keep myself together and speak to them in an age appropriate manner. That's a challenge when the children's ages range from 6 to nearly 16.

I reminded them to always think twice, act once. I explained that sometimes we make choices that cannot be undone. I asked that they think about the consequences of their actions before they act. Before they speak. I ended with a gentle reminder that the company we keep can make all the difference in life.

I want for them to trust their natural instincts and if a situation feels wrong for them to trust that feeling and get out of the scenario as quickly as possible, and always always ask for help. Raising children in this day is crazy scary. There are so many things that I never ever encountered that these kids have, and will. I didn't have to live with texting, e-mails, the Internet, cell phones, and digital photography. When I was a child we had hand written letters, negatives and prints that could be easily torn up, burned, never to be seen again. We had more 2nd chances. We had longing. We had a lot of basic fundamentals that kids are missing out on now.

If I have learned anything from the recent losses it is that we are not promised tomorrow, and that we need to cherish the time that we do have and just make the best of it.

The Longing

There are lovers content with longing. 

I’m not one of them.

-Oriah, The Call

We all long for something. A nicer home. A newer car. A whole new wardrobe. No? How about love? Everyone is longing for love, on some level, at some point in their lives. Everyone. 

I long for a deep connection with other beings. The kind of feeling that brings me to my knees. A connection so intense it makes me want to cry. A connection that makes my heart race. An intimacy that will carry itself in my mind for days to follow. Passionate. An unbridled lust. The kind of stuff people think only exists in movies. 

But, it does exist. I know this because I have experienced it. It may not last for long but it is the best high that I have never been able to fully explain. It's like when the other person breathes in the are inhaling the air from your lungs. It's amazing. 

That. I long for that. I don't know if I will ever experience that again in my lifetime but I am so thankful that of all things I don't get to do, at least I know I did get to experience what it feels like to be sucked into somebody else so completely that you forget that there is an entire world surrounding you. 

God how I miss that feeling.  

<3