HOW?

How, how do people find the time, make the time, discover the time to write every day. Not the people who are writes. Those people, that's what they do. They're free time is spent writing because that's their job or their passion. I'm talking about people like me. People who do other things AND write.

Will I transition someday into a person who writes more? I want to write more. I have a lot to say. Maybe I have things to say that no one else wants to hear, but, I don't think that matters to me. It's like some of my art, or design that just has to come out of me. It wants to have form in the world. My thoughts want to be expressed. They pull at me. It's funny, I even find myself experiencing my life through how I would write about it at times.

So, if I have that, the need for my thoughts to become tangible in this world, why is it so hard to make the time to write??

The Hardest Relationships

So, yes, my last post made me have that warm fuzzy feeling about my son. Seeing that good, big chunk of love that is inside of him. I like that feeling. I like that feeling much better than the one I had earlier today. The feeling like I could snap at any moment and become some horrible monster. The "Mommy Monster". I mean, I was standing on the sidewalk across the street from my house. In suburbia. Which means in literal terms that everyone who lives around you, knows who you are from what they see in the street. When the fire department shows up or the police. When you're pulling weeds in your front yard which is a big garden of weeds and we wonder why you're picking them. Picking only some of them and leaving so many others to grow and take over your yard. Why you sit there for hours on end, picking, at nothing. And then there's the crazy lady down the street who yells at her kids to put a stick down like it's a bar of gold. That's when you realize...YOU are the crazy lady living down the street yelling at her kids.

Nice one!

Morning Love

I was rushing out the door. Trying to get my oldest, my 6 year old, to school on time. We walk, which is great but that means we push it to the last possible moment that we can. School starts at 8:14 and we leave here at 8:03 on a good day. It takes forever to walk a block and a half. Why? There is the walking super slow, the getting distracted by running into a friend on the way, the looking down at the ground at every crack and leaf and the oh so dreaded smear of poop to divert his attention.

This morning, we were getting ready to leave and he ran back into the great room for one last thing. What that was, I didn't care. What I cared about is that we were supposed to be out the door already. I walked back and gave him "the look" which meant get over here now we HAVE to go!. He became sad and pointed and whimpered just a bit.

I've been trying to be better, a better mom, and not yell at him in the morning. To see what it is that he may have to say or do and maybe, just maybe it would be o.k. and we would still make it to school on time. I can't tell you how glad I was that I'm practicing this new way of being. I asked him what it was that he needed. He told me that I needed to go in the great room. That there was something there for me. A message for my day, from him.

Sigh.

This is what I found:

Why I Love People

"Why I love people." This isn't a statement that often rolls off my tongue. In fact, quite the opposite if you were a fly on the wall in my home. Well, more off my husbands than mine but what's the difference. But, from this video that you'll see below, it captures why I do love people. I love that people participated in this. I love that someone came up with the idea! I love that they had the passion to make it grow and now, years later, it's HUGE! Oh, and I love the production quality of it. It's just awesome. I'm feeling a bit of people love for sure.

It was on a blog, Color Me Katie. I don't know much about it but I'll be checking it out to see what she has to say. I mean, after finding this, I can't wait to see what I else I stumble upon.

I guess starting off by introducing myself would be helpful. So you, Internet, have an idea of who I am.

I'm 40. It's not that bad. 40. Really. I actually think it's my favorite age so far. I know who I am. At least I think I do. Ha! I could do without the sag here and there. The dark circles that make an appearance under my eyes every day. The outcropping of gray, wiry hair that  I'm trying to figure out how to style and if to keep. But, overall, it's not half bad.

I have a couple of kids. They qualify as "young children". One's in pre-school and the other is in 1st grade. They fill my days, my nights, my weekends and every other waking and non-waking moment. I wouldn't trade them for the world, well, maybe for a two day weekend, all expense paid trip to some exotic beach front hotel room where I would have uninterrupted rest, meals that I could eat while warm and the sound something other than a whine or the dreaded call, "mama, I'm done!". Do you know that call? Anyone? That's the call for me to come and wipe their bottom as they sit and go poop on the toilet. Sigh. No one really explained what the "whole package" was about when having kids. Or maybe they did and I just didn't listen.

So, I'm sitting in our office the other night with my husband. He's at his desk and I'm at mine. We're in a pretty small room but have managed to figure out how to make the space work. One way was to put shelves up on either side of the window. My side and his. How sweet right? Well, I've been feeling a huge need to purge these days. There's just SO MUCH STUFF. Everywhere I turn, more stuff. In feeling the need to purge, the office is a definite place to start. I have a small business that I run from home and have "things" that I need for the business. Those "things" have made their way on the desk, under the desk, in the filing cabinet, on top of the filing cabinet and on the shelves. My shelves. So, we're sitting there, talking, about the need to purge and re-organize and I swivel around to look at my shelves.

That's when it hit me. Like a ton of bricks. I looked at my shelves and couldn't believe my eyes. I turned to M and said, "Take a look at my shelves. Do you see how cluttered and crazy it looks? Filled with old projects I've started and never finished, projects I want to do sometime in the future. Books that I like and books that I need and sample books from my business. Baby books that haven't been finished, photographs that need to be scanned. It's FULL of me! That's my brain. That's me. Really, truly and as much as I hate to admit it. Those shelves are a complete outward manifestation of who I am." Then I turned to him and with a sad, pathetic voice asked, "Don't you feel sorry for me?" I mean, come on, who would want to feel that way??!!

Then, and this is the part that made us both laugh out loud, I looked over at HIS shelves. There they were, so much neater and more organized than mine. The top shelf had his "cool" bottles of tequila and one of his photographs framed in a cool frame. Second shelf, his music and a stack of papers and photographs. Oh wait, the stack, that unorganized stack of papers on his shelf, right, that's MINE! UGH. I've even leaked my disorganization on to him! But, the cool thing we realized was that everything important, o.k. the tequila isn't really that important but the bottles do look cool, was represented on his shelves. His photography, his music, photographs of his boys and me. Me in the way of a disorganized stack of papers, but, none the less me.

So, there you have it. I think that's a pretty good summation of who I am, at least in a visual, non-descript sort of way. I'll be back, when, I'm not sure. Probably when the boys are asleep or on a play-date like they are now. Until then, I'll be trying to clear off those shelves and purge the stuff that I truly don't need.

Wish me luck!