A-Z Oh the Places I Might/Should/Could/Will Go!

I spent a great deal of time at the airport yesterday. This is a reality of having kids with parents in separate states. Kid exchanges are overcomplicated and expensives. Yesterday we sent one kiddo to visit grandparents in the A.M., then had to leave because the next kiddo didn't come into town from their mom's house until four hours later. We could have wandered around the airport for 4 hours, but the parking fees are atrocious.

As a side note, we went to the mall and after reevaluating the financial damage from those 4 hours, it might have been less costly just to stay at the airport.

So anyway, back to the point. Aside from the outrageous parking fees, I actually love the airport. I love the feeling of people moving all around me, everyone is going somewhere. Most of the time if I am at the airport I am going somewhere that I want to go to do something that I want to do. There are a lot of great memories at airports picking up loved ones, being picked up by loved ones, landing in Jamaica for a fabulous week of sun, food and drinks. You get the idea.

I have been thinking a lot about what I should write about during the A-Z blog challenge and I was having so much trouble finding and idea that really fit with me. I even asked for ideas in an earlier blog. BTW - Thank you Sheila Siler for your ideas! Bottom line I felt like a sinking ship before I had even gotten the ship into the water. BUT...the airport, my shining beacon of happy thoughts got me thinking....Just where might I be in one year. Where could I be, where do I want to be, what might I be doing a year from now? And voila! My A-Z Blog was born, a list of places I could be, things I could be doing, events that might be happening one year from now.

I am super excited to get started and I have already started listing some of the ideas in my head. I need to get started on them before they escape and leave me forever. Ms. Shirley gave me some great ideas and one of them I actually really liked and had already come up with some ideas for, I am going to pepper my A-Z with "Excuses from my kids and husband", because really those are just to priceless not to commit to paper err...digital media.

Looking forward to a month long celebration of blogging with abandon! If you haven't already check out the A-Z monthlong blog challenge here!

M

The Hole in the Story

Today's thoughts and babble are brought to you by the logic of an 11 year old.

We have a routine for every day of the week, it involves a usual order of things on most days except for Wednesday's, which are early dismissal days and things get changed up a bit. We have arranged for an after school activity and transportation every Wednesday. Today as far as I knew was just like any other day. That is until my stepdaughter showed up at home much earlier than she should have been. I was going to try and recreate the conversation that I had with her while trying to figure out exactly why she didn't go to her after school activity, but it was so convoluted, I'm still not sure what happened. I am going to attempt to paraphrase:

M: What are you doing home so early, was your activity cancelled?
R: Well, no I was confused.
M: What do you mean you were confused?
R: Well, the teacher said something about Monday, but I didn't know about Monday and today doesn't start till 12:50.
M: Wait, so there is no activity today?
R: No, there is, I was just confused.
M: I'm sorry now I'm confused...So there is an activity you just decided not to go?
R: NO ... (BIG SIGH) Last week she said Monday that we wouldn't start til 12:50, and I thought they wouldn't let me stay in the office.
M: Hold on, but your group doesn't start til 12:50 anyway, that's the normal time. What do you usually do until your start time?
R: I wait in the office with the others.
M: Ummmm, so why are you home again.
R: Because I was confused.
M: Confused about what?
R: It doesn't start until 12:50.
M: But that's the same as every Wednesday.
R: Yes.
M: .....

That believe it or not is the short of it. There is obviously a critical piece of the story that she is leaving out, a piece that I have as of yet to uncover. Right now I feel like I just read a story with a major plot hole. It's unsatisfying and now I have to play detective. But I guess parenting is sometimes like attempting to fill in plot holes. Sometimes they are gaping and virtually impossible to fill in without more information, and sometimes they are small and easy to smooth over with a little inference.

Speaking of plot holes...I have been reading more book reviews lately. They help me for a number of reasons. First they allow me to find new books to read so that I can avoid reading my textbooks. Second, ideally they will help me craft a better novel. Ideally. Lately, they are starting to scare me. You know how they always tell you "Don't look down" before you jump off of the high dive? Inevitably you do look down, and then your suddenly frozen by the sight of just how far away the water looks. Reading book reviews is like looking down before you jump off of the high dive. It may be better just to close my eyes, plug my nose and jump for now. I'll work on mastering my graceful swan dive once my knees stop trembling from the height.

M

Reading, writing and homework - Oh My!

A few weeks ago I posted a blog indicating that I was planning on participating in the A-Z Blogger Challenge. I still plan to do that, but I am coming to realize that I am probably going to need some kind of plan if I intend to participate successfully. A blog a day for every letter of the alphabet seems kind of like a no-brainer, but I'm starting to think that I might at least want to have some idea of the things that I would like to write about. Since I now have 17 followers (WOO HOO...moving up in the world!) I thought I could maybe enlist your help in brainstorming ideas for each letter. So throw me some letters and some topics and I will see what I can do with them.

I just finished reading a YA book by Lauren Oliver entitled, "Before I Fall". It was a pretty good read over all. It didn't hold my interest as intensely as I expected it to, but I liked the writing enough to pick up another book by the same author "Delirium". The story revolves around a female character who re-experiences the last day of her death over a period of a week. During that time she learns a great deal about herself and the world around her. I liked the evolution of the character and how she responds to the people around her as she changes. The book was smartly written and delivers a nice message that was sometimes a little bit suffocating but I think the ends still justified the means.

My own writing process is picking up again. I seriously think that blogging about all the other stuff in my head helps me to be a better writer of fiction. On the downside, school has started up again and I have a BAD case of senioritis. The last time I got a bad case of senioritis, I ended up as a 7 year undergrad student. I'm much more interested in writing about my world than I am in writing about various politically charged public health issues. I need to make myself a schedule that will allow me to keep writing the things I want without neglecting my homework, this schedule also needs to include working, yoga, swimming, meditation, house keeping and paying attention to my family. Are there even enough hours in the day for all of that? I guess one thing is for certain, I'll be getting my gold level Starbucks reward card in no time flat!

Just keep swimming...and don't forget to lend me your alphabet ideas!! :)

Mandi

The Quiet and All That Follows

Don't you hate it when you have some really profound and interesting thoughts, but then you don't write them down and when you try to remember them, they're just gone. POOF - No more brilliant thoughts - they are all just gone and no amount of racking your brain can bring them back in their former glory. I am suffering from this affliction now my friends. I'm trying to just get the slightest inkling of the brilliant allegory that I had created which somehow linked my mom's lasagna with my emotional state. I've been grappling for it since the day after my house suddenly went still and silent because the last of my family packed up and went back to their home. Alas, it's gone. Suffice it to say my mom's lasagna is awesome, but I wasn't feeling so awesome and somehow even the leftover lasagna wasn't comfort food enough to make me feel less lonely.

I'm now trying to get back into my old patterns, well the good ones anyway. The bad patterns never really just go away unless you choose them away. I don't feel particularly creative recently and I'm not sure why that is. It seems to me with all the sad lonely feelings I have swirling around since my family went back to their respective states I would have lots of emotional ammunition to spit out. But I don't. I kind of feel like a stone.

I'm not really sure where I am going with this, which isn't exactly unusual, but I usually have at least a shadowy idea of a plan. I'm just trying to get the thinking/writing/creating ball rolling. I guess that makes all of my readers my guinea pigs! :) Lucky you guys!

I miss my family, and the missing of them seems to have swallowed up a whole lot of other things. It might seem like I don't appreciate my husband and my step daughter as my family and I assure you that that is far from the case. I think sometimes the depth of the bond that I feel between myself and my parents and siblings is what makes me so keenly aware of all of the ways that I don't share the same bond that my husband and stepdaughter share. It's very hard to learn my relationship with them individually and as a pair when I don't share the same kind of bond that they share between each other and with my step daughter's biological mother. I realize that dwelling on this thing that feels like a bridgeless rift is not the way to overcome it, but I cannot ignore the feelings either. So I find myself observing a lot. I don't know where it's getting me yet, but I guess I just feel like if I observe it then it will continue to help me understand my own role in this family.

So I guess I found something to say. I'm sure I could say more, but I think I'm just going to marinate in this for a little while.

Just Keep Swimming....

Mandi

Loss

We all experience loss. Sometimes the loss is quiet and sometimes the loss is suffocating. The quiet losses usually happen when we lose someone that we knew and cared about in one of our former lives. The suffocating losses seem to suck all of the light out our lives and make it nearly impossible to feel able to find our way through the dark. The quiet losses cause us to pause in our busy lives and reflect on the fact that someone we knew, someone who had played a role in our lives is no longer with us. We remind ourselves that our quiet loss is someone elses suffocating loss and we send our thoughts and our love to them. We do this in the hope that these little things will provide some air to breathe and some light to follow in the stifling grieving process. Tonight I send my love and my thoughts to my former classmates' family as they grieve for his loss. I send them a smile on a memory of when he held my hand walking home from school and I was over the moon. These are small gifts at the alter of enormous grief. I hope that they play some role in helping his closest family and friends to find some measure of peace. You are loved and you are missed rest in peace Mike Rolle.

Admiration

According to one of my favorite authors, Cassandra Clare, it is International Women's Day. I realize that it would be so much easier to just verify this the old fashioned way, through Google, or through the really old fashioned way, by looking at a calendar. But I find that it is so much easier just to take her word for it. Plus, since I read that it was International Women's Day it gave me an idea for a blog and I'm just not willing to give that up.

When Cassandra Clare tweeted that it was International Women's Day she also asked that people respond with a woman that they admired. I am going to respond in blog about the women I admire because I have more than 140 characters worth of admiration to post about.

I admire many women in my life and every one of them has played a part in who I am today as a human and a woman. So let me begin with the first and most important woman in most human's lives. A mother. My mother.

I have blogged in the passed about my mother and how life has come full circle to point where I understand so many of the things that she said and did for me as a child. Things that because I was a child I could never have appreciated or understood. My mother has taught me so many things that it feels a little bit unjust to try and narrow the discussion down to a few points, but then again there is something to be said for saving a little for later. That being said I am going to tell you a few of the myriad of wonderful things that make my mother such a light and influence in my life.

My mother taught me strength. She taught me through example, through conversation and with compassion. Strength is a versatile word and it can imply many things, like physical strength. Most people would not expect a blog about female strength to discuss the physical strength of a person, but I feel it's important to recognize first and foremost that my mother has a significant amount of physical strength. I learned this because 1- I was a pain in the rear and I got my fair share of well deserved spankings (which ironically left me with a painful rear) 2- I vividly remember that my mom used to stay up until 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning making sure that the house, the laundry, the cooking etc., were all managed, and then she would get up at 6 or 7a.m. and go to a job for 8 hours a day. I get cranky if I get less than 8 hours of sleep more than two or three days in a row. She did this on a regular basis for years. I remember that as a very naive and self centered child I just thought that she liked staying up late. I now understand that she stayed up late out of necessity because it was the only time she could get things done without interruption and it was the only time she had time to herself. My mom is a woman with a great deal of physical strength, and I admire that, because I know how easy it would have been for her to just let things go for those extra hours of sleep.

My mom's example of strength is beyond the physical however, my mom has an exceptional level of innate emotional strength. I have learned from watching her that there is nothing in life that warrants absolute hopelessness. There is always hope you just have to be strong enough to hold onto it even when you can't see it. I suppose some would call that faith, and my mother's faith is a beautiful piece of artwork. Something invaluable that both of my parents taught me about faith is that, faith is not static. Faith is a living and evolving entity. A person must be strong enough to allow their faith to grow while simultaneously exposing it to ideas that challenge that faith. I am a person of profound faith in many things and that is a result of the strength and love of both of my parents.

My mom taught me that strength isn't always stoic, there is a time for the quiet and stern strength, and there is a time for compassionate strength. Strength has the wisdom to accept both modalities and use them accordingly. I could continue jabbering about all of the ways that I learned about how to find, cultivate and apply the strength of my humanity from my mother, however,I am only going to point out one more important lesson about strength that my mother taught me. Love makes strength stronger and strength gives love more depth. They are two ideals that when combined in the right spirit truly allow anything to be possible.

I love you Mom, & Thank you.

Champagne and Blogging

I feel like I need to write something today. It's been a weird but good day. I keep forgetting that it's Monday since Josh took the day off to celebrate "Dia de Los Joshos" AKA Josh's birthday. My husband is a funny and adorable man who appreciates all things family this means a few things.

1 - I always make his birthday cake (he says it's better than a store bought...I'm such a sucker)

2 - I always make him whatever he wants for dinner (again he says my cooking is better than a restaurant...double sucker)

Today he has asked for a few additional birthday treats:

1 - I need to play Guitar Hero. He doesn't play but he gets a kick out of watching Rianna and I play the songs that he loves. It's not that I mind, it's just that I find it so funny how much enjoyment he gets out of watching us play Guitar Hero. Every time I turn around he is putting whatever new Guitar Hero that is out in our Blockbuster queue. It's funny since he doesn't play the games and cute ...just because it is.

I had more to ramble on about, but I just got handed the guitar so I guess I'm done blogging for the moment.

Rock on peeps!! Ha ha!

:)