Chaos
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. - Rumi
-
Time is not my enemy.
But sometimes it feels like it is. I’ve been (ever so slowly) reading a book called The Lazy Genius. It’s full of really great stuff. Practical help. Emotional help. All the in between help. The author talks about the seasons of our lives – raising little babies, empty nest, new careers, frequent moves, crisis, whatever it might be for you. And she also talks about the seasons we actually live in here on earth – you know them, fall, winter, etc. She suggests that, instead of constantly battling against the one we’re in when we find ourselves in our least favorite of seasons, we should lean into the season, recognize…
-
story: listen for it
We’re all telling the same story – aren’t we? Isn’t it the only one that matters? The story of ourselves, sure. The particulars might belong to us. The shading and the scent, the hue and the timing. But it’s never been just our story. It is all of history’s story – all of humanity. The ones before. The ones right now. The ones after. It’s the same story that happened to me more than ten years ago in the mountains of North Carolina in a week long writing class. I was relatively new at my mothering gig – four kids, three under the age of four. My first time leaving…
-
pressure.
I’ve felt this inordinate amount of pressure for the past month or however long stay at home orders have been in place and this strange new world has dawned. I love productivity. I love staying home. So this ought to be like my dream right? And in some ways, it kind of is. The world is shut down. My family has to be home. There is literally nowhere to go. Forced Family Fun non stop and all that. Right? Except, of course, it doesn’t feel that way. Some new message is constantly popping up – Don’t waste your quarantine. Learn something new. If you don’t make use of the this…
-
Quarantine Made Me Do It
You know – I really like being home. Many Friday nights it is EXACTLY what I choose do even when there are a potential myriad of other options. But just like seeing a sign that says “don’t walk on the grass” somehow makes that patch of grass uniquely appealing, something about being required to stay home makes it a bit harder. So here we all are. Feeling the feels. Missing our friends. Realizing how important face to face friendships are, how important physical touch is, how much it matters to show up, break bread together, share a bag of popcorn at the movies, babysit one another’s kids, have a cup…
-
hello out there.
There’s just the one topic right now – right? With all the places and all the things cancelled and postponed, I keep thinking I should end up with time on my hands. My calendar is completely full of white out and yet – I haven’t caught up on any of the things. Not really. It’s been a scramble instead. A scramble to shift classes to some version of online. A scramble to adjust work demands. A scramble to cancel and postpone and rearrange our upcoming literature field trip. To contact all of the locations and lodgings and I still have this feeling that I’m missing something or someone that I…
-
Weekend Ramble: Les Mis, A Kitten & Daylight Savings Time
The Weekend Ramble
-
an apology/not an apology
I wish I had more time to write here. I wish I had more time to undertake creative endeavors. Why has it been harder to write blog posts for the past six months or so? Overseeing the education of five people requires a LOT of effort. The teenage years provide a plethora of fodder for blog posts but so very little of it is shareable since they are older kids with bigger feelings and stories of their own. Let’s just say, the parenting of teens is a FULL TIME task that hits at the most unexpected hours and in all sorts of dramatic must-respond-immediately sort of ways. My part time…
-
current plans. current mood.
The holiday schedule makes me feel as if I’m back in college. I’m staying up too late. I’m regretting it during daylight hours. I’m pretending I barely need to be responsible. I’m eating whenever I feel hungry instead of at routine intervals. And I’m eating when I’m not hungry at all – just for fun or for community or for flavor or for the sound of a crunching chip while I read a book. At night, I’m shoving stacks of clean, folded laundry to one side of the bed and sleeping right beside it – classy. This is what 46 looks like this season, apparently. It’s this in between week…
-
weekend ramble (the wrong date. the wrong time. the right pants.)
This weekend I . . . Spent a girls weekend with three of my daughters while my boys went fishing. Watched two movies about Jane Austen in some capacity. (Austenland and Becoming Jane. One was satisfyingly happy and one was real gloomy.) Took my girls shopping – with friends – and marveled at how much they enjoyed it. The times – they are a changing. Asked my friend if I could pull off pinkish/purpleish pants. She said yes. Purchased said pants. And two days later, wore said pants, deciding that even if I couldn’t wear them in some perfectly flattering way, that I didn’t even care because the color made…
-
state of the union, currently
There are two screws loose on the lawn mower and is that some sort of metaphor for my life? Stuff gets almost done. Right? I’ve got five tabs open on my computer, various virtual carts waiting for me to push “order” but I’m waiting on some small detail in every tab before I can finalize the order. (And lest you think I am an online shopaholic, these five tabs are all school supplies and curriculum that of course cannot be purchased at one convenient site.) I’ve got four boxes packed and the grass is high and my car decided that yesterday was a good day to not start. Some…
-
my ideals and my reality: they aren’t lining up
Today my dad stopped in for a short visit. It’s always good to see his smiling face. Last month on one of his pop overs he gave the kids an art assignment – they were to draw a picture inspired by a song he loved. It is a song that imagines what the Garden of Eden might have looked like before sin entered the world. (It’s called “When Dragon’s Hearts Were Good”, hence the dragon themed art it inspired.) The kids had a time period in which to complete their artwork and they all worked hard, to varying degrees. On this trip he swooped in and judged the contest…
-
walking the line
There are days when I think I’ve got a couple of things under control – a portion of bits and pieces working together alright. When I feel like the routine is serving us and I have meals pre-planned and the moments feel sort of in my grasp. And then there are other days. Moments here and there where tears surprise me – from worry or fear or exhaustion. A heavy weight settling first on my shoulders and then on my chest and landing somehow in my throat, squeezing so that just the smallest stream of air can flow in and out, clouding my mind and making my view a…
