7/21/12

My 20th high school reunion is this weekend.  I didn't go.  My husband is in Turkey and I didn't want to go alone.  at least that's the official story.  It's true, but I also wasn't feeling cute enough to go.  Isn't that silly?  I was feeling old and worn out and didn't want to hang out with the "cute girls" from high school as they looked hot and I looked like the mom of 7.  Which is another thing.  I didn't want to have to hear about the 7 children thing from people I wasn't good enough for 20 years ago and see them judging me now.  I like my life.  Love it.  There are very few things which I would change if I were given that power, and the number of children in my household is definitely not one of them.  I like these children.  Which I'm learning is not the most common thing in the world.  Liking your own children.  Sure, most people lovet heir kids, but when you suggest that they spend time with them, they shudder in horror.  How did we get to a place and a time where people give birth to children and then raise them into people they dislike?  How does that even happen? Are we really that busy? Are we really that lazy? Why?  What is it buying us?  People don't do things for no reason at all.  There's always a pay off for anything we do, so if we are not spending time with our kids then it's because there is something "better" that we could be doing with our time.  I wonder if it's worth it?  I look at the pictures of these women I once knew.  The ones I didn't feel cute enough for.  It's obvious that they are spending their time earning money and working out.  I'm not sure which one takes precedence.  It's also obvious that they aren't spending that time with the one child each one has.  How is it that they all only have one child? Is there some kind of "popular girl" pact to only have one child each? One beautifully dressed, perpetually pouting child?  Because I've seen the Facebook pictures, and if my children looked at me in that tone of voice, I'd be smacking a bottom or two...or seven....but who's counting?

3-24-12

I hat it when I have things I want to say but I don't know how to begin them.  I sit and stare at a blank screen and mentally sketch out the endings, the perfect middle and then write and rewrite the beginning because it just doesn't sound right.  I know what I want to say I just don't know how to get there from here.  I'm like my daughter when she drives a car.  How can we have lived somewhere for almost a year and she still doesn't know how to get home from the grocery store?  The grocery store we go to at least once a week if not more? Is she concentrating so much on the driving that she doesn't even see the signs on the way or is it that she's so distracted by life when I'm driving that she tunes out her surroundings and doesn't pay attention? It's really hard to tell but I tend to think it's a lot of the latter.  For a smart girl she can be pretty clueless, but then can't we all?  Which is funny because that's kinda what I'm trying to write about...how clueless people can be about things.  How they can miss the obvious right in front of them.  It's weird how things can hide in plain sight. We just overlook them because it seems too easy and nothing good is ever easy or so I've been told thousands of times in my life.  It's the things we work for tht we appreciate.  But I don't think that's always true.  Sometimes we appreciate gift even more than the things we earn because we know that there's no way we could get them on our own.  Like the lottery.  I'd totally appreciate it.  Is God reading that?  I'd be a great lottery winner because I know that there's no way I could be a millionaire without the help of the Almighty.  Goodness knows I'm not going to get there under my own steam.  I'm a bit too lazy for that.  Which is probably why I'll never win the darn thing.  God knows it wouldn't be good for me no matter how much I liked it.  I need things to do because I could totally be a curl up in bed eating bon bons girl while the maid cleaned around me.  May be not bon bons though because I'm not sure what they are.  I'd definitely eat cream puffs those because they are made of Yum! And I'd get to the point where the maid had to clean because my cream puff eating butt wouldn't be able to get out of bed, so I'm better off without the money I suppose.  I'd still be grateful though, so He can maybe rethink the whole it wouldn't be good for me thing?  Or not.  I just really need to figure out where to begin this thing which is probably completely obvious like "stop thinking about it and just write." so I will.

3-21-2012

Listening to E read.  It's painful to hear Dick and Jane. Do parents even name their kids Dick any more? I hope not. That would be mean. There are lots of names that you no longer hear.  Like Bob.  Why don't more parents use Bob? It's a respectable name.  Could it be that they no longer want their children to be respectable? They want them to be hot and cool.  Which you would think would cancel each other out, but somehow they don't.  People don't dream about having warm children.  Although maybe they do and they just never say. No one ever says I want a normal kid who will lead an average life of modest accomplishments.  But that's what most people do.  Isn't it? We lead average lives and are well satisfied to live them.  So why don't parents want that for their children?  Why don't they want solid? They want hares and not tortoises. The tortoise won. Does anyone really call the tortoises? They're turtles, aren't they?

Great. The baby is smiling at me and not just eating.  Eat!  I love you too, but Eat! Hurry up because I have to pee and I don't have that whole diaper safety net thing going on around here.

I'm back.  I had to put her down.  Love her, but I can't hold the baby every hour of every day.  I was talking with a friend of mine earlier about the saints and the women who disfigured themselves to avoid marriage.  That just seems harsh to me.  I get not liking a guy, but plucking out your own eyeballs?  That's a bit much.  Then he's just thinking how he dodged the bullet from that crazy train and he moves on but what are you left with? Empty sockets? What do you do with that? Did they have sunglasses back then? No. Probably not. SO the whole world just got to see your flapping lids.  Gross.  I don't need to see that.   That's nasty.  I don't care how holy it makes you, it's gross.  I'm not a fan of grossness at this point in my life. I have 7 children, that's all the gross I need.  I don't even want to know how many bodily fluids I'm wearing by the end of the day, but if I were a petri dish I'd be all fuzzy.

2-4-12

Silver glitter fingernails.  I'm kind in like with them.  Not love.  The nuns in elementary school would always tell me you couldn't love things.  You can only like them a lot.  So I like having silver glitter fingernails.  A lot.  I have decided that life is too short to not have a little fin along the way.  This has been a stressful week and a $1 splurge on nail polish seemed appropriate as a way to treat myself.  I feel a bit guilty about it.  My husband would never have splurged on himself right now.  He's stronger than I am.  He would say that we have all these medical bills about to hit us and we have absolutely no extra money to spend on frivolous.  He's the grown up.  He usually is.  I wish he weren't so much.  I wish he could find the boy that's still deep inside him somewhere.  The kid whose eyes lit up today when he saw the 3D previews for the rerelease of Star Wars.  I heard him OOOH a bit in the theater.  He can take the boys.  If it were the first three movies I would go, but I can't stand that Jar Jar guy.  His voice gets all over my last nerve.  I gets on all of my last nerves.  I just want to tape his mouth shut.  Him and that dumb map on Dora.  I KNOW YOU'RE THE MAP!!!!!!!!!!  Stop telling me so. Ugh.  I hate that guy.  It's okay to hate him.  He's not a person.  You can't love things, but you also can't hate people.  You'd think I learned that in religion, but that was grammar class.  Weird, right?

1-29-12

All that's been on my mind all day is this stupid HHS mandate.  I just want to cry, scream, and shake people at the same time.  What's going on in our country that the Obama administration actually thought they could do this?  What state is the Church in that they just may?  So few bishops have even spoken out.  The people don't know what's going on or they don't care.  Many just see it as the government's dragging us into the 21st century whether we like it or not.  Well, we don't. Or at least I don't.  They have closed adoption agencies because of our insistence on traditional families, and now they are trying to close or force the conformity of our churches, universities, hospitals, charities, etc. and the majority of the Church is silent.  Am I just paranoid in thinking that this is the beginning of a time of persecution?  If we don't comply, then what?  What would the country look like without Catholic institutions?  Do we want to see that country?  If they can do this to us, then what about the other churches?  Which Christian group is next?  They are harder to attack because they lack our organization, something I always thought of as an asset and I still believe that it is, but it's harder to fight something that you can't define which makes Protestants a more difficult target.  That doesn't mean they're not one.  If we can be forced to violate God's laws then so can anyone else.  How sad that I think we have a better chance of getting help from our Protestant brethren than I do from the Catholics in the pews.

1-26-12

Does anyone ever bake the cookie dough in the logs or do we all just eat it with spoons?  It's one of the things I most love to sneak for a snack.  It's the sneaking that makes it taste better, I think.  If the kids caught me it would be gone in a moment.  Instead I let them have a bit at a time ans ration it out.  Like blueberry muffins.  We have to count and divide and figure out how much each will get.  Right now one box of muffin mix will feed us 2 each, but when the baby starts eating we'll have to start using a second box.  The volume of food we consume is amazing.  It's enough to feed a small country.  I think we might be a small country.  If so, we need a flag.  I think I'll put E on designing one.  She needs things to do once she's done with her schoolwork.  You've never seen anyone so determined to learn as our E.  Not even our eldest, who is pretty motivated, ever loved school like E.  She wants to be an architect.  How cool is that?  She loves to draw and do math, so I told her she'd be a great architect.  I explained it to her and she agreed that she could do that.  Maybe she will, or maybe it's just a 7 year olds attempt to please her mother.  Silly girl.  It's very rare for her not to please us.  It's more important that she pleases God and is happy with herself.  Except not really.  She's 7 and needs to please me too.

1-25-12

It's funny the people you talk to on facebook.  All my childhood friends are there, the girls I talked with late into the night.  I don't talk to them.  I chat with the girl who was the school slut, the creepy goth guy, and the hippie vegetarian chick. They're so fascinating to me now.  Why was I so blind to their charm back then?  I love the wry sense of humor, or the wisdom from experience that they have.  The girls who were so cool then are so boring now.  I'll bet they were boring then.  I've learned hat cool is nothing more than the right clothes, a certain walk, and looking too bored to care.  Who would want to be that?  Why is it attractive?  Is it just that they were playing hard to get so we all wanted them to like us?  It's strange because that same aura of boredom is still attractive to me today.  Now, though, I know better.  I see it for the mask of insecurity that it is.  If they want to wear a mask, why wear a bored one? They should find a fun one full of glitter and sequins to mask who unsure of themselves they are.  People get distracted by shiny things.  Like fish.  Fish are attracted to cheap shiny plastic and cool colors so they don't miss the rest of the stuff that's just hanging around.  Funny how the uncool people are the people with the self esteem.  They are also the only ones who can dress like a fishing lure and not look stupid.  It's because they know how tacky and ridiculous they look, but they own it.  They know clothes are just a disguise anyway, so they turn everyday into Halloween.  Which actually makes them the cool kids after all.