Ever Wake Up And Notice Something...

I came to a sudden and strange realization today.  I have a person in my life that I've never known happy.

I came into this persons life or vice versa mid-journey.  It's been a couple of years now and it's still mid-journey.

It's been very up and down, lots of drama and it often leaves me thinking if not reeling.  Sometimes I try not to think on it, other times I try to figure it out.

It's not necessarily drama but I don't know what else to call it.  It spikes and then dies down, but never fully goes away.  It's been spiking again lately and so I've been trying to figure it out, especially because it's an ever increasing spiral, each spike being more spectacular than the one before.

I've entertained all sorts of theories in my mind as to the why of it all and in the end, I don't know.  I don't know that I'll ever know or ever figure it out.

Today though, I was suddenly seeing it differently.

For a few years I've been in this relationship thinking well, when the journey is over then there will be peace and happiness because surely that must have been there before...

But then I realized, I didn't know.

I just simply didn't know.

I've never known this person to be in a place without unhappiness and fear and drama.  I've never known them to be just happy.

I don't mean like back flips and joy overflowing over the top, I just mean like happy as a constant, not just something that happens to you for a day or two while you wait for the horror to begin again.

It's interesting in a way.  I'm sure I've known plenty of people like this before and been in relationships like this before, but I think in the end I've always pulled away or grown some distance in there.  I don't know what the future holds or how it all works out.

I just don't know, today, where I am, what it would be like to be in this relationship, if there never comes to be a happy ending, content sort of place.

I'm actually starting to, not worry so much, but wonder, what if there never is that peace?  What if it's always this cycle of drama?  What if every bit of happy is tainted with the waiting for the disaster or worse yet, looking and searching for all the what ifs that could become the disaster?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a peaches and sunshine.  Not at all.  I'm about as cynical and pessimistic as they come, but I don't go looking for the negative.  I don't bury my head in the sand but I don't put my energy into panic and stress and worry about something that is a potential.  Even when it's something that's pretty much a given based on what I know or already have experienced, I still usually just lay back and wait to see what happens before I have a moment.

This laying back thing helps me to keep the freak outs and anger moments and whatever else down to a short minimum.  There's plenty of stuff that ticks me off and plenty of people that set my on edge, but, by facing life this way, it keeps my emotional energy on an even keel or more so than if it just when wild with every what if.

Should this be your way of life?  I don't know.  I only know it's the place I've learned to find my way to after 40 years of figuring out life, not because I'm smart or something like that, just because I'm living and learning.  I've been learning what works for me.  What keeps me sane and functioning.  What keeps me calm and mostly nice.  It's a place I need to be in for me, for my kids and for the general population of the world that have to interact with me.

So take it for what it's worth today, this random thought and observation of mine.

Techno Rant

Oh Internet, you drive me wild.  You delight me and frustrate me and frighten me all in one.  I find the Internet brings out some enormous pet peeves for me.

Now that I'm an iPhone convert I am especially fond of technology.  Nothing excites me or delights me more than "instant" answers from Google or Dictionary.com.  The map thing on the iPhone has saved my butt too many times to tell.  Bible, books, Facebook and games all in my pocket whenever I desire.  Oh. My.

I have learned to love things like Hulu and Pandora.

My blog is a happy place for me to let out some of the words and stories and things that clutter up my mind.  It's a great way to have a modern day soap box, and I have plenty of opinions.

There are things that tweak me the wrong way though too.  But even those are double sided and split.

I love blogs.  I really do.  I have an enormous pet peeve though.  My peeve is if you leave a link in your blog, tell me why.  What do you want the reader to get from watching the video you posted?  The song you linked is supposed to tell us what about you or move us how?  A link with no explanation or information means nothing to me and most often I simply ignore it and move on.  I don't have the arrogance to guess what you were trying to tell me.  It's like I tell my littles at home here, just use your words and tell me.  Don't think I will just know or be able to guess through some magical super power.  It's your blog, use it and speak your mind.

And all this linking leads me to the next thing.  Pinterest.  It is an amazing thing.  It delights me.  I was a crazy wild pinner for a few months and now I have deleted them all and started over.

What, why you ask?

Because it's a respect thing.  It's best explained over at Link With Love.  Please, please follow the link and read about it.  Respect the art, the creator, the thinking.  It's the right thing to do.  It just is.

And it's exactly like when you link something on your blog.  You leave that link with respect and mention, a little hat tip if you will, to the original creator.

Why?

Respect.

If it was your art or words or work, you would want the credit, so give the credit where it's due.

This my friends leads to my next peeve.  I want to pin with proper credit to the source.  Sometimes, often times, it means I decide not to pin something because I can't find it's source.

How is this a double edge thing for me?

Well, as I write more and more, blog and book and otherwise, I want what I write to be so good that someone desires to copy and share it, but I also want it to be attributed to me and not "stolen."  On the other hand, I'm a relatively generous kind of gal and so there is another part of me that thinks oh well, whatever it's ok, I want to be nice and it's an honor to have my stuff, my words, thoughts, works thought so highly of that someone just took it.

It's complicated to explain, but that's just how it is inside my mind.

Another Installment of...

Where have I been?

I have a goal, to be able to say, in my 40th year my first novel hit the market.  It's a big crazy goal.

Now, on one hand, it's not.  This is the technology age and anyone and everyone can publish as they desire.

On the other hand, I want it to be worth your time to read it and worth your $0.99 to buy it!

This week I have been working hard at the final rewrites.  Next up some edits and some choices about conformity.  Ahead on the calendar, research about ISBN's and Copyright.  Then the details at the different places I want to sell the book.  Cover art work permission.  A better title.  A book jacket blurb.

After all that, waiting.  Waiting to see if anyone buys the silly thing.  Then more waiting to read what people thought.  In between all that waiting, I'll be writing, working at the next one.

I hope to be well into the waiting and working on the next one by summer break.  I hope to have sold a few copies and heard a few good reviews.

Finally, for all my real life friends, family and acquaintances, a little heads up on it.  Even though I am a Christ follower, it's not a Christian book.  I don't enjoy those, matter of fact, I usually think they stink and it wouldn't be "me" to write one of those.  It would be way to fake and contrived coming from me.  So if all that doesn't throw you and you still want to give it a read, it'll be out soon.

Stay tuned for updates and info over the next few months.

In the meantime, fire up your own blogs and tell your stories, we all have them in us, so start telling.

Dear Valentine

Hello Mr.
Yes, this one's gonna be personal.
We've been playing this game for more than 20 years now, for you detail people it's 20 years married this fall and 6 years dating.  More math.  I'm 40.  That's a lot of my life.
Our 20 plus years have not all been easy or peaceful or romantic.  Some years have been down right hard and painful and ugly.
We are crazy different as individuals, but tied together with the cord of the Lord we make a great whole.
Your capacity and gifting for seeing the future and planning for it, gives me the gift of peace.  I don't worry because you plan.
Your attention to details and discipline to finish things and follow through gives me the gift of being flighty and creative.  I have freedom because you have the details.
Your hard work day after day, year after year, pays the bills and then some.  You give me the gift of being a stay home mom.
Your dedication to our children and all the "extra" ones we open our home to gives them an amazing earthly example of a loving living father.
Your complete commitment to your Heavenly Father teaches them day in and day out by the very way you live your life.
I am proud of you.
I appreciate all you do.
I am thankful every day for you.
I am honored to be your wife.
I love you Mr., here's to many more Valentines.

This morning while I was in my shower, I wrote you an amazing blog post.  There was no paper though and no electronics to record my thoughts.  I'm out of soap crayons so nothing on the wall.

I had it tucked into my mind and was ready to come down and squeeze some writing into my day and then my phone rang and my day was upended.

My brilliant post is gone.  I have a few shards left in my mind and I can't decide if it's worth the effort to try to find it.

Where, Oh Where, Has Our Blog Writer Gone?

Well, I've been here.  Living life.  Sometimes that living doesn't leave you much time for blogging, or it's living that really shouldn't be blogged.

As a foster family, a certain part of our life can't be blogged.  That part of our lives has been very time consuming as of late.  It is a part of the program that I don't love.  Piles of paperwork and hours of phone calls.  

Another part of real life is sick kids and sick moms.  We've had both for a while now.  The kids are taking turns being sick and I have been down for just over 2 weeks now.  That drag on the body slows the mind and keeps me from the blog.  I'm almost ready to give in and go to the clinic.  

Still another part is when you have to finally make those calls and be that mom.  That's another one of the places I got to in the last two weeks.  A certain situation at one of the schools involving one of the kids finally hit that place of needing a much larger intervention than just a mamma talking to a teacher.  Sigh.  Principal meetings are not my strength, but a mamma has to what she has to do for her kids, even when it's out of her comfort zone.  

I've had a few blogs that are perking in my brain.  I've written and rewritten, deleted and started again and I just haven't quite gotten it to the part where it actually says on paper what it says inside my mind.  It is often my dilemma.  In my mind the idea, the feeling, is super clear and yet I can't get it to the paper the way I want it to be.  So, I'm working on it.  Slowly.  

So that's the compact version of where I've been.  Mostly on the sofa with my tea and tissues, loading up on vitamins and chicken soup, catching a nap where I can and keeping life moving along as smoothly as possible and as close to normal as it gets when the mamma gets sick.  

What Do You Do In A Weekend?

Friday
Got one kid finished at one school and ready to start at the next one.
One kid read the Pledge at school.
One kid had baseball practice.
Had family burgers & fries night.
Watched WWE with the boys.
Took The Teen shopping for jeans.
Took The Jock shopping for jeans.
Saturday
Gave time out to The Teen.
Required everyone to take a nap.
Family pizza & movie night--Real Steal
Wine, The Mr. & Fast Times at Ridgemont High
A very nice online chat with an old high school friend.
Pictures from long ago.
Homework.
Sunday
Lots of time outs.
Baseball practice.
Games between kids and The Mr.
Took The Diva shopping for her father/daughter dance outfit, sheesh.
Family Sunday Dinner.
Fireplace time.

In between we did all the regular stuff too, like sick kids and bed time issues.  There were video games and outdoor play times.  We read stories.  We cleaned stuff.  We watched TV.  We yelled.  We laughed.  We prayed.  We took pictures.  I'd say we payed our bills and worked on our taxes, but in reality, The Mr. does that stuff.  Me and math is a great big old joke.  I did some writing, worked on my Bible study and read part of a book.  Siblings have been siblings.

I'm sure there was plenty of other stuff, like our forgetful dog that went in and out about 12 times in an hour this morning.  I swear she was having a moment of, "now why did I come out here again?"  You should have seen the look on her little hound face.

So, here's the million dollar question.
What did you do this weekend??