-ing

This list of -ing mind-openers came to me from a friend who got it from someone's blog. I can't link back to it because I can't find it. I admit though, that I haven't given it much effort. The purpose is simply to replace my answers after the colons with your own.

Making : scrapbook pages
Cooking : almond poppyseed muffins
Drinking : nothing, but dreaming of tea and knowing it should be water
Reading: various blogs, wishing I was that creative and expressive
Wanting: new carpet for my upstairs
Looking: at a long list of things I should do
Playing: tea party with Chloe
Wasting: time that should be spent exercising by doing nothing at all (i.e. this)
Sewing: baby ditties for my friend Allan's first baby, Davina
Wishing: my family lived closer
Enjoying: the sunshine and warmth
Waiting: for naptime so I can mow at least half of the lawn and for the dryer to beep at me
Liking: my newest dessert discovery - Thai sweet black sticky rice with coconut milk and mango
Wondering: what the new school year will bring for my boys
Loving: having a little girl in the house
Hoping: that next year at this time we'll be selling the house so we can travel full time
Marveling: at how quickly my kids are growing up
Needing: some clothes that actually fit me
Smelling: my baby after her bath
Wearing: capris and a t-shirt
Following: my child around, picking up the groceries that she removes from the cupboards
Noticing: how distant my sons' horizons have become
Knowing: that I am just as normal as every other mom out there
Thinking: about new and improved ways to organize my home
Bookmarking: websites that can entertain and teach my kids at the same time
Opening: my mind to the possibility that I can be fit again
Giggling: at the silly things I overhear my boys say
Feeling: thankful that the darkest of days seem to be coming to an end

Attic Attack

I thought that this summer, I would finally weed through my huge collection of "stuff" (otherwise known as keepsakes, mementos, souvenirs, crap, clutter, and junk) and simplify my life. Or, rather, our lives.

I have boxes of stuff from ages ago, and stacks of stuff from just days ago. I have things to keep forever without a doubt, like the cute little Scottish cap we bought for our firstborn upon learning we were expecting him...we were in the U.K. at the time. There are things that can definitely go, like the once-precious painting of a butterfly made by a 3 year-old. It was so adorable at the time but now it's just a melted mess of crusty paint and wrinkled paper, from being in the attic so long waiting for me to do something with it. I need to take photos of the things that are enough to look at, like those works of toddler art, and get rid of the originals. I can scrapbook the photos and call it good. But then, scrapbooks pile up too and can become, themselves, a form of clutter. Usually I don't see it that way, but some days I do. Hmm, there's always digital scrapbooking, I suppose. Anyway...

There are things worth selling: an old 35mm camera that works but is just not useful in my lifestyle, decades-old historic photo slides from national parks that some collector out there would love to have, and various other trash-to-treasure selections. Some should just be donated to shelters and Goodwill, like the countless boxes of outgrown clothing filling up our closets, attic, shed, and garage. Yes, there is that much. I always expected that I would cut up the kids' old clothes and make a memory quilt for them, but then I'd probably hate that quilt because it would be a mishmash collection of patterns and seem unorderly, so it would just irritate me. I've decided instead to let my daughter wear what she can from my sons' old closet fillers, then get rid of them. Recently, though, I've been repurposing items that were made of great fabric and disassembling those with nice cuts and making patterns from them. Even though I'm something of a pack rat (ya think?!), I have honestly benefited from that many times. Hard to believe, I know, but it is true.

I need to sort through board games and make sure all the pieces are included in those we want to keep and get rid of those we don't or those that are missing pieces. I hate crushed game boxes, too, so I'm thinking of transferring them all to handmade cloth drawstring bags and hanging them from hooks on the wall of the closet under the stairs. I could put a little pocket inside the pouch, to hold the instructions. That's a good idea, right?

I need to scan the documents I want to keep, because even when I want or need to look at one I don't do so because it's such a pain to locate the one I want. This applies to medical records, genealogy documents, kids' letters to Santa, etc. It is okay to keep just digital copies of those, right?

I definitely need to scan photographs. Wow, what a monumental task that is in itself. This is a top priority, as those are the things that it would hurt most to lose of there were a fire or something.

Yesterday I approached the bookcase to locate a couple of good books to assign to my kids who are suffering from their self-imposed summertime boredom blues. I had been thinking that it was time to obtain digital copies of the books we love and get rid of the hard copies. We have two large bookshelves in the living room, two in Jim's office, the equivalent in each of the kids' rooms, and that much again in the Creativity Room. (Formerly known as the school room, craft room, anything room, etc. We change its name frequently.) There are about a dozen boxes of books in the storage space over the garage and probably twice that (at least) in the house's attic. There are books scattered all around this house, in every single room! But then, when I looked at the individual spines of all those wonderful books I again realized what a truly enjoyable collection of literature we have. It seemed, in that moment, that I couldn't possibly part with those treasures. So...I don't know what to do about that. Surely there are many that can go, but which ones and how many?

Well, I suppose I can forget about doing anything in the attic. It must be 120 degrees Fahrenheit up there, on a cooler day. In my mind, that means not tackling anything that has a connection to items in the attic (such as the books, though I realize that books may be one task that it's ok to do in bits). Why only do a task halfway? This stops me time and time again. Each task seems to require some other big job because everything is intertwined. I can't seem to isolate something enough to accomplish it without delving into others.

I'm probably not making any sense.

There it is. That's the thing that stops me most. If I can't completely finish something, I don't even want to start. When I snub that and go for it anyway, that's when I end up with unfinished tasks and a bigger mess than I had in the beginning.

This is really nothing you need to know and surely you don't care, but writing all this helps me sort things out, at least mentally, and makes the task seem almost do-able. Thanks for hanging out with me.

I think I'll just sit here and look at the nearby bookcase. Maybe if I'm lucky I can find a literary world to dive into so I can forget about the long to-do list.

Fat to Fit

Today I have a frustration that is very rare to me. I actually *want* to exercise, but don't have the opportunity. I know I'll get the chance later, but later I probably won't be interested.

This morning as my husband was getting dressed I noticed that he's starting to develop a six-pack. Yeah, really! At Christmastime he was waaaaay overweight - he tipped the scales at about 255 pounds. Now he's 198. He's going to run a marathon in a few weeks (he's done that before) and hopes to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which I guess is a pretty big deal. I'm not a runner, so I'm not in touch with these sorts of things. A friend of mine recently ran the Boston, though, and I am very proud of her....so I'm not completely in the dark. I mean, I know it is a big deal and quite a huge accomplishment. Actually, anyone who can run 5 miles without stopping impresses me. I used to be able to do 3 or 4 without really breaking a sweat and talking the whole time, but three kids and a couple decades later, I have a hard time running to the mailbox. Sigh.

Sometimes his progress is inspirational and other times it completely deflates me. It took him six months to get where he is. Only six months! But wow, six long months.... I'm completely schizophrenic here, I know. A few months ago I weighed 147. That's about 30 pounds above where I look (in my opinion) my best. Now I weigh 140. I'm aiming for 120, though 125 will make me happy. I wonder how long that'll take. And, I wonder just how much I'm willing to give up to get it. I have to think of what benefits I'll gain, not what temporary pleasures I'll lose, I know.

But now a thunderstorm is brewing, and the kids want to make Thunder Cake.

None for me, thanks. I've got a couple dozen pounds of fat to ditch.

Experimentation

Since I'm working so hard at finding something to do that's useful and productive and not the usual un-fun housework sort of thing, I'm going to try to add some photos to this blog.

This image is a swatch of some fabric by Alexander Henry that everyone seems to love. I've had a few custom orders for skirts made from it, and am currently making some special-order dresses. I think I'm going to use it to make a new cover for my big Kitchenaid mixer, too. Last time I purchased it, a woman in the fabric store kept peeking at the bolt of it standing in my cart. Finally she told me that she'd like to use it to decoupage a wall in her kitchen. I've never decoupaged anything, but that sounds like a monumentally frustrating task to me. Good luck, lady.

On the subject of decoupage, I'm considering covering my daughter's little play table with some cute fabric and trying my hand at decoupage. If I mess up, it really doesn't matter.

Rainy Days and Mondays

What a dreary, dull, uninspiring Monday this is. It's rainy and cold outside, the kids are restless, and I have a very messy house and mountains of laundry looming before me. Days like this bring me down, make me wish I could chuck it all aside, grab the people I love, and set out on a don't-look-back kind of journey. I know I can't do that, but it would be a nice day to curl up and read books, color with the kids, or take a nice long nap, but no one but me is interested in any of those activities....which makes them impossible for me. Sigh. I guess I'll go vacuum somewhere. How'd I get myself into this?

to pierce or not to pierce

I'm sitting here checking my email and my kids are watching TV. It's some documentary-type show about a remote African culture. The narrator is a woman from some foreign land, wearing a gorgeous scarf and long, beautiful earrings. I'm reminded of something that happened last week, so I think I'll ramble about that for a while and see what comes of it.

My 21 month-old daughter and I were in TJ Maxx ("T J Maks-ks" as my GPS lady says) one morning last week looking for a few cheap but cute hand towels that I could turn into bibs when a woman stopped to admire my girl. She talked to her, asking about the book she was looking at and pointing out the "puppy-doggie" on the page she was turned to. She seemed like a nice enough lady, regardless of the baby talk that irritates me.

"She's so cute, you should get her ears pierced!" the woman exclaimed to me.

If she's so cute, I thought, why would she need any embellishment? If she were an ugly child, what would you say? Maybe, "Wow, that child could use some help. You should get her ears pierced."

I have a couple of pretty generic responses, when someone says something like that. This time it was:

"Thank you for your opinion. I'll consider it."

When I say that, I truly mean it. Sometimes that consideration is fleeting and other times it lasts for weeks. But honestly, sometimes it's just to shut the person up, and that's what it was today. What can a person say in response to that? Actually, sometimes they keep rambling on, like the old man on Ellis Island who insisted my kids have a huge dose of religious learning every day. This woman wasn't that bold, apparently. She smiled at me, said, "buh-bye bay-beeee," to my daughter in a high-pitched voice that had to be as painful to her throat as it was to my ears, and wandered into the row of mostly ugly blouses.

This time, my consideration was brief. I've only had a daughter for 21 months so I don't have years of first-hand experience with such girly topics, but on this one I'm pretty much set.

I feel that it's my daughter's decision to get or not get her ears pierced, with veto power held by her parents. I'm not going to decide for her that she should have holes put into her body. That's her call. When she's ready to ask for that, we'll consider it. At that time, Daddy and I get to decide whether or not we think she's ready for it (meaning that she can responsibly keep her piercings clean and her jewelry well-cared for, etc.) regardless of her desire for it. I'll probably accept her decision and then make her wait a good while, so she can not only reconsider it but also so she can have the joy and excitement that only comes with looking forward to something you really really really really want. We're too much of an instant-gratification society, anyway.

At the same time, it doesn't bother me immensely to see other wee people with ears pierced. I think they're cute, most of the time, but cute like a dog with a sweater on. I'd never ever own one, but there is something cute about them. My little niece was downright adorable with her teeny tiny sparkles on her earlobes. I've also seen toddlers with hoop earrings, which I think is a good way to earn a trip to the ER.

I knew a mama once who had identical twin daughters. I'm usually pretty good at spotting differences in twins and being able to tell them apart, but in this case it was nearly impossible. I thought it made sense that she got the girls ears pierced and gave them different colored earrings to tell them apart. She could tell at a glance which child was which no matter what they were wearing or if they were wearing nothing, like at bath time. I wonder if it would truly matter if you mixed up your twins one day and then never unmixed them. I suppose if no one ever knew it wouldn't matter, but if I was their mom it would devastate me if that happened.

I've heard people state their belief that getting ears pierced is a rite of passage. I agree with that. In my opinion, 8-12 is a good age range for the first ear piercing. Later is always great too, or even never, but I think 7 year-olds are still too young to be given not only the responsibility of keeping their piercings healthy but, more importantly, the decision of whether or not to get the piercings in the first place. I remember getting my ears pierced, and it was a special day for me. I had to wait until I was 8 years old. It was a memorable day for me - just my mom and I went to the next town to get it done. With two siblings, a million and three cousins, and a constant flood of neighborhood kids to and from our house, (not to mention the many jobs my mom always seemed to have) I didn't get a lot of one-on-one time with my Mom, so this was precious. Sure, it hurt, for a second. It was no worse than the stubbed toes I acquired throughout the summer or the countless mosquito stings or even the occasional sliver from walking barefoot on a weather-worn porch. It's even less painful than a paper cut or a bitten tongue. In fact, I'd choose the brief pain of ear-piercing over any of those other things. This is not a decision that should be made based on the pain.

Most kids are going to experiment with some rebellious behavior in their pre-teen or teen years. I heard one mom tell about her 14 year-old who got her ears pierced during a mall outing with her friends despite explicit orders not to. I thought, "Better that than drugs or sex in the back seat of a car." If we take away all the less harmful desires, they'll have nothing left but the worst ones. After all, some kids rebel just to rebel, not because they are really sincere about the topic they choose for their rebellion. If my daughter wants to defy me on something, please let her choose to get her ears pierced and NOT sample a drug!!

While I do believe it's a choice a girl should be allowed to be involved in, I think that this is also an argument that can go awry. I'm familiar with a private school that attracts a lot of natural, outdoorsy, "hippie" types of folks. You know, organic food, extensive recycling, attachment parenting, breastfeeding 'til age 6, parents + kids + dogs + cats + the baby = one big family bed, no vaccinations, that sort of thing. There was one mother who was so adamant about not getting her kids the recommended vaccinations (which the school had to require for licensing reasons) that she created a huge stink about it, saying the school and the licensing agency didn't have the right to impose such a requirement upon its students. She argued that vaccinations were foreign to the body, can cause unknown problems, and that children should have the right to refuse them. Her son had the longest golden locks because he didn't like to get his hair cut - that was his choice, she said. Yet her baby daughter's ears were pierced. Dangly foreign objects of what she called a "Nepalese design" (don't ask me, I just smiled and nodded) plugging up holes that were not natural in her body, none of which was chosen by the tiny girl. Where is the logic in that?

I could probably go on, because I do that when I'm tired and I find a topic with so many valid (and invalid) arguments for and against it. Just so you know, I'm not picking fights here. If you have an opinion or story and you want to share, fine, but don't judge me for what I say. This is my blog, after all.

What's your opinion on that topic? Does your culture lean one way or the other on it? Why do you feel the way you do?

I'm not really sure what I should be saying in a blog. I'm not a big reader of them, so I have little idea what's right, what's cool, what's interesting to others, and what's worthwhile. So, I'm going to wing it. I'll write what I'm thinking or feeling and if someone wants to read it, that's fine. If not, that's fine, too.

Be patient, please, if you are a reader. I know that if I review what I write I'll delete it altogether and not even have a blog. Since it's been suggested and recommended numerous times to me, I'll give it an honest try.

Here's my blog. La-dee-dah.