Christmas

It's hard to even know what to write about this Christmas, but it been weighing on me heavily and I sort of feel like I need to write something about it down.  Maybe it'll help to make it all make sense.  But then again maybe certain things don't need to make sense or are better off left in the realm of mystery, beyond comprehension.  

Grief sucks.  Really badly.  

My cousin who I love dearly and who I've basically looked up to all my life, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Nancy Ann.  Nancy Ann was only with us for 9 hours before she died.  

I am very grateful that I was able to go to Baltimore last weekend and be a part of the funeral and to just be with family and be sad.  The pain of losing a child is beyond description.  It seems to me to be the deepest and darkest of pains.  Without words or boundaries of any sort, it spreads and grows and covers everything.  It is horrible and terrifying and sacred in its absoluteness.  

On the Monday we returned from Baltimore (so this monday) we learned that one of my mom's best friends from high school and long time family friend had been murdered over the weekend by her boyfriend, who then proceeded in the most cowardly and disgusting of fashions to kill himself.  

The point is, we spend a lot of our lives saying things like God will never give us more than we can handle, and even if things get rough, we'll have love or each other or our faith.  What never occurs to me is how damn much could be asked from us.  The world feels raw and dangerous right now.  And I feel extremely self centered as these things have not happened to me directly but to those whom I love and care about.  but I grieve grieve grieve.  It is all I can think about most days.  

And I love.  My boys (all three) are amazing.  I have held them closer and tighter the last few months.  And while I did let many of the details of Christmas go this year, less gifts, no cards, very little baking, my Christmas day was more wonderful than it has been in a long long time.  

Dust in the Sunlight

Right now the boys are smacking the couch and playing in the dust that rises up and swirls around, visible only in the beam of sunlight coming in the window.  Its charming.  And yet I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by the amount of dust they're able to procure from a single cushion.  

Rant

Poverty is failure when you live in a nation that measures success by the size of your paycheck.  Poverty is humiliation when you live in a culture where pride is determined by the things you own.  I am not referring to great personal wealth, I am referring to simply having the ability to buy groceries, simply being able to buy shoes for your child.   I have been surrounded lately by people who have some sense of a redeeming social value in personal poverty, people who 'choose' to live in poverty or glamorize the idea of being poor.  But when you cannot feed your children, when taking your child to the hospital is making a choice to take on debt that you may never fully recover from, when you don't know where you are going to live from one day to the next, when you have to rely on others to provide for you what you cannot provide for yourselves, it is painful and it is destructive.  

The stress of worrying about bills and food causes people in poor communities to have higher rates of heart disease and diabetes.  According to the U.S. Department of Justice 55% of homeless girls are engaged in formal prostitution.  Children in poor communities are far less likely to graduate high school.  I find it to be so condescending to claim that living in poverty is in any way living simply.  Poverty is complex and overwhelming for those trapped in it. 

I know this all seems obvious.  And I know that most people just want to help those in need, but it seems to me that sometimes people want to help "the poor" but have no idea how to begin to relate to the people living in complex situations that have led to poverty.  

Things I am grateful for...

1. Vanilla cream chocolates

2. Biore Pore perfect strips

3. Thunderstorms

4. A hubby who can help do my homework for me (he designed a website for my final project...one class done!  Hurrah!)

Holy Crap.

Thats me.  At the fair.  With a butter sculpture of Mt. Rushmore only made with Ohio presidents.  And yes, thats dear old William Henry.  

I mean really.  Could I be more happy?  Could they have added any more of my very favorite things into one perfect...thing?  

I can't even begin to be articulate about this.  

Ira Glass and Chris Ware...oh it's all just too much!

Happy Birthday

I just returned from DC yesterday to discover that somehow, remarkably and unbelievably, my 20's were over. And it occurred to me this weekend, in one of those "it should be incredibly obvious and yes I understand in my head what's happening but, wow, I just got it" moments, that I will not get this time back. There is no going back, no do overs, no special compensation for those who threw time away. Life moves on and so must I. Trite. I know. But I think a part of me always thought that I would get a chance to figure out life like my friends who didn't get knocked up at 20. Like maybe I would be given some free time at some point to get to know myself. But this weekend was as close as it was going to get (thank you Rob for letting me leave you and the kids for 4 days) and it had to be enough. What I realized is, that no one knows themselves much better than anyone else. I know that I am capable of raising two young boys and navigating a marriage for 8 1/2 years. This has to be enough for now.

On the other hand, spending time with my three girl cousins (all older and all my childhood heroes, they wore black freaking lip stick for goodness sake!) this weekend made me realize that we are all aging in the same Grandma Fender mold, with thickening bellies and thicker skins. It's an odd thing to look around you and see three people raised in different cities and living very different lives who are very much like you in some defining ways. Things I thought of as my own are no more than character traits instilled in us by our hard drinking, tough as nails Grandma and the 8 kids she raised (our parents). Maybe it's because Grandma died this year but the whole thing seemed incredibly sad and sweet. We are her legacy. And we are crazy.

Don't get me wrong. All in all, between the cousins whom I love so very dearly and the amazing friends wishing me well, this was my best birthday ever. I'm looking forward to this decade.

Last night this seemed important

It seems like, as you live, the number of things you've known, enjoyed, and loved which have left and gone away begin to outnumber the things you currently know, love, and enjoy. As a kid, loss is so abstract and unreal but as you grow older and begin to experience loss, whether it's watching a neighborhood change or a friend leave or a parent die, you start to really see how precarious your place in this world is. I'm not saying I'm there yet, I'm just watching Rob's grandparents getting more and more fearful of a world that doesn't let them hold on to anything. I know that I have a hard time with my favorite flea market being gone, it's been over a year and I still am grieving. What will it be like when all of my favorite places and people have slowly disappeared into a past that no one but myself really understands?

Almost, Not Quite

So when I'm feeling a little blue, a little down, a little confused about my life, I like to change my surroundings. Its a thing. Earlier this week I rearranged my living room. It makes me feel better. This last Saturday I was feeling a little down and so at about 9pm I headed over to wal-mart and bought a gallon of orange paint for my bathroom. The problem with buying paint from wal-mart is this, the color is mixed by hand. No, no fancy machine/computer thing-y for that billion dollar retail chain, nope, just a guy, reading the back of the card, and sort of doing the best he can. Twice this has worked out ok for me because, lets be honest, a spur of the moment, night time paint purchase is rarely well thought out so the color is more of a whim then a heart set, matches everything perfectly type choice. Anyway, this time, the third time, the paint was awful. It was freak show banner red-orange. It was glowing, it sucked light into it and somehow shot it out into the hallway. I'm not sure how this happened, I just know that it did. You could sense when you were getting close to the bathroom because of the radiating red/orange glow that spread out slowly from the door. So last night Rob had to go out and get another color. We will put that one on tonight. We will see how it goes. The problem with whim painting is, once the whim has passed, I have little to no desire to return to the project. Alas, I have no choice with this one.
The second project to go awry this weekend was my first dress made to sell. It just didn't quite work. I'm not sure what happened, I used the same pattern I used for a dress that I love. But this dress sucked. Truly. It looked like something your gramma used to sleep in when you were a kid and would have sleep overs at her house. Horrid. Ug.
I will persist. I have to, I have too much fabric not to.
To top everything off, Eli has been sick all weekend so Rob and I had to trade off staying home with him while the other went to various planned events such as cookouts and whatnot. It was sort of sad because Rob has to be in class every night until 8 so we don't get much family time and separating on this gorgeous weekend just wasn't what I had planned. I think at times I get a little crazy when the majority of my time is spent in the company of only children. I love love love my kids, but, well, sometimes a person needs adults around.
I just keep telling myself it's just one quarter and it's oh so worth it. But man do I miss school.

Beautiful Dreary Days

Could the weather get any blah-ier. Ug. At least my grass seed is getting nice and watered. Maybe we will actually have a pretty lawn this year rather than a patchy yellow dirt yard.
Today I took Eli down to Buckeye Donuts on campus and we sat in the front window eating big breakfast sandwiches and doing dot-to-dots. We ended up sitting there for two hours and Eli still didn't want to leave but he had to go to pre-school. Tulah was working and gave us each a free donut. It was really a wonderful morning in spite of the weather. It's funny how different the little dudes are. I never really had to work with Ren on reading and writing, he just sort of picked it up. He just wanted me to read the same fact/science books over and over again until he had them memorized. Eli doesn't love reading in the same way, he would rather color or build and he las little patience for learning exercises. He can sniff out an educational activity from a mile away. Its just beginning to hit me that the boy still doesn't recognize his ABC's and he's about to turn 5. Ren was reading at about a second grade level at this age. On the other hand, Ren couldn't build with blocks to save his life while Eli can recreate the designs on the boxes of legos and then some with no help at all. Everyone has different giftings. You know, if I looked at adults the way I looked at kids, embracing the differences as God given gifts, I would cut everyone (including myself) so much more slack.
Ren gets out of school early today so I must go and get him. I think since Eli and I had a special morning together, I'm going to take Ren out to get a cookie and play cards at the local coffee shop.
Also, thanks to a little encouragement from a friend (thanks, Angela) I have started sewing again.

De-nemesized

Well, the battle of the nemesis is off. Come to find out, she's just cross-eyed and hasn't figured out the "looking at people from a specific angle as to minimize the cross eyedness". So, yeah, she gives everyone that look. I sort of feel bad for her now. It's ok, I really had few real plans. Although now the T. Ho's peeps are just giving me random prices. Everyday, I get the same drink and everyday it costs something different. I think they are all screwing with me now.
Anyway, now I have free time and nothing to do. One of my very best absolute soul mate type best friends moved away this last weekend. I thought I was doing ok with it but now as I look back on the last few weeks, I realize I've been really not ok. I miss her and that is that. It's funny how someone I've only known for two years really carved a giant place in my life. The night before she left we went to our favorite hang outs and ended up back at my house with a fabulous circus print fabric we found at wal-mart on clearance and we sewed skirts for ourselves. They turned out great and now we can match from two hundred miles away. If you read this Val, we need to coordinate our circus days.
The point of the story is that I think I'm going to start trying to sell what I sew. A friend of mine said at our women's church group thing, "look where God is working in your life and then go in that direction." And though I don't think she meant it in this way, I started looking and realized that I have become obsessed with fabrics and sewing. Sewing has become my zen time. I'm not given the chance to get out and have quiet alone time the way I like but sewing has become that quiet meditative time that I need. It fills that place up in me so that I can go out and face the kids and the mommies and the family and friends and what not. So I think maybe it's time to take the next step.
The funny thing is, ever since I decided to do this, I've become paralyzed. I've spent more time on the computer looking up people who sew better than me (um, almost everyone) and coming up with reasons why my ideas are lame and overly simple. Which btw is another form of selfishness grandiose-ness which is stupid and something I need to avoid. Arg,

Nemesis

I have a nemesis. It may seem odd, I know. But its important to keep oneself busy while not in school and having a nemesis is a great way to occupy your mind during the dull times. And, lets be honest here, having a nemesis is fun. She works at the Tim Hortons a block from my house. She always tries to charge me more than she should and she rolls her eyes at me whenever I order. I have no idea what I did to annoy her. She was like this the first time we met and it's only gotten worse. Well guess what missy, you're on my radar now. You are my nemesis. Let the games begin.

Break!

Well, I am officially another quarter closer to being a teacher. I just have to tell myself this or I will certainly want to run screaming from the fact that I have two years ahead of me. I told Rob yesterday that I suspect his job situation is because of me. If he were making more money I would be so less motivated to become a teacher and I'm fairly certain this is the path I'm supposed to be on for now.
It's just tough sometimes when I still have the urge to do ten million different things. This last quarter was sort of amazing. I got to learn how to do field work and ethnographic studies and what-not and a part of me would love to marry field work. My professor asked me if I ever thought about pursuing my PhD and I had to act flattered and say thanks and explain the path I'm on right now (stay at home momma/part-time student who needs to have a viable career manifest in the next few years) while what I wanted to do was hug her and cry and shout "Yes yes yes!"
It's not that I don't want to be a teacher. Summers off, great hours, effecting children's lives, yada yada yada. But I know the flip side of that coin. I watched my mom dedicate her life and all of her energy to her kids for the first ten years of her career. I see how it drains her still after 16 years. I know that to be a good teacher you've got to put your heart into it. I know that the reason they have summer breaks is to give the teachers a chance to get their blood pressure down.
Side thought, what is the first thing you always do (or want to do) when you see a puffer fish in a tank at the pet store?

exhausted

I'm really tired. So I don't know why I'm wasting time even typing this up. I think I shall go to bed. But I want to shout out to Helen who might read this. To you I say, If you can blog then so can I. So there.