Friday's Fabulous Five

Is it seriously Friday already? I can't believe it!

1- Kids are out of school as of Wednesday.... and I've heard it said that, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." I can DO this summer thing! I CAN!! I CAN!!!!

No seriously, we had a rough start to our summer on Wednesday, but I held my ground and became "Drill-Sargent Mother" and I think we're going to make it! Which leads me to my number 2 fabulous thing....

2- CHORE CHARTS!!! OH, the power of a good example!! I've been studying and taking mental notes on my friends who are good moms and make their kids do chores. Oh sure, I've made my kids do them too, but I've always been very inconsistent about it, and I HATE the battle. It's always a battle and I'm a lovah, not a fightah. So, incorporating my notes and mental observations of my good-mom friends, I made a chore chart yesterday and I feel VERY good about it. The kids now know the rules. They can't do anything fun until they've done their chores. And guess what? Ella got up this morning and came upstairs totally dressed and brushing her teeth! She had made her bed and cleaned her room before she even came upstairs! Mac still gave me a little grief, but the rules are set so there's much less room for argument! I told you I think we're going to make it this summer!!!

3- So I mentioned a while ago that I needed a new dryer. Well, actually I just mentioned that my dryer has been making a "rather strange and shockingly loud noise lately" and that was clear back on January 14th. Well, that "strange and shockingly loud noise" got worse and worse. Here's an image for you... just imagine turning on your dryer and the noise being so great that you may as well have a 747 jet engine in your basement. YEAH! It was awesome! It got to the point where you couldn't carry on a conversation if the dryer was on. Seriously. That's a noisy dryer. Anyway... off and on since then I've been perusing craigslist.com to see if I could pick up a good, used dryer. After all, a dryer can easily last 20 or 30 years (as did the jet engine one... it had to be made in the seventies... avocado green... beautiful!) and if I could pick one up that was just a few years old then I could be set for a long time! So, I've checked periodically and yesterday I found two! One was $65 and the other, $100. I liked the $65 price better (obviously) but the $100 one seemed a better dryer. So, I asked the $100 guy if he might consider going down to $65 and he said, "Sure". Really? I thought. Just like that? No haggling? Wow!

So, we loaded up in Dustin's work truck and went and looked at the dryer. Beautiful, it was. Only about 7 years old, white (bye, bye avocado!!!), clean, complete with a light!, and best of all.... QUIET! $65 later, we became the proud, new-used owners of a Kenmore 70 series, large-capacity, Quiet-Pak dryer!!

There is a universal truth that you can't know the good without experiencing the bad. Let me tell you how true this is! I've mentioned how you don't know how awesome closets are if you've never really lived without closets. And now I'll tell you that you don't know how WONDERFUL a quiet dryer is until you've lived for six months with a 747 in your basement. Seriously, I came down to check on the kids after Dust put them to bed and I didn't even know the dryer was on until I came close to it and heard the little ping of buttons, zippers, etc., tumbling around inside it. I could've sat down and wept right there. Blessed, peaceful, soothing, quiet, white noised dryer. Best $65 I've ever spent!

4- It's our anniversary tomorrow. Last year was ten years and we decided to do something we hadn't done before. We went out of town for the weekend. My mom and dad kept our kids. Because of that GREAT weekend last year, I think I made a decision without even realizing it. I NEED to go out of town for our anniversary... without those darling little humans I call children. Love 'em to death, and it's now a anniversary requirement to leave for at least one night, just D and I.

So, this year... the big eleven... we're going on a little jaunt to the mountains. We are staying in a "riverfront" room at a lovely place with a dinner theater thingy. I am very much looking forward to it. YEAAAH!!!!!!

5- (Dang. This is a long list. Or, long stories on each item. Are you still with me? Ok.) So, number five on my list today is my friend, Maria. Maria, over the course of the last year and a halfish, has become a sweet treasure to me. I am so grateful for the things she has taught me.

We were at the park yesterday for the last of our of Mother's Group activities (that Maria perfectly planned and excellently executed for over a year!), and another little gal, Destiny, was asking if there were any good babysitters we knew of in our neighborhood. We talked about who we knew of and then we mentioned our swap-weekends. We told how we would swap kids once a month for dates and one couple would go out Friday, and one couple would go out Saturday, each keeping the other's kids. It was a perfect arrangement. We touted the benefits and Destiny looked dubious. I realized then that it was a rare situation, indeed. All the components were a perfect fit. Maria's kids and my kids are all the same ages and play very well together. Our youngest two are best friends, and our middle two could rightly be called such as well. With endless imaginations and creativity, these children have a blast. We trust Maria and John and they trust us. We have a lot of similar ideas about child-rearing so we know our kids would be well cared for and treated fairly. It is a rare thing to find such compatibility.

And, my friend Maria and her cute little family are moving this weekend. Well, Monday, technically. It's a very bittersweet thing. She is going to law school, where I'm sure she will prevail. She's one of those people who excels. It's just what she does. So, I have no doubt that she'll conquer law school with excellence. But I will miss her so much!

And so, my number five Fabulous thing in my life this Friday is Maria. An incredible friend with a powerful mind, endless talents, a beautiful heart and a tough hide. She's taught me to stand a little stronger, worry less about the things I can't change and change the things I can, trust myself more, learn my mind and then speak it!, get off the fence, be a little more organized about things, and decide what I want, make a plan and do it. In short, she is AMAZING!!!

So, thanks, Maria! I love you and know you'll ROCK this law school thing!

Muscle Memory

I went running at 9 o'clock tonight. I have two friends, Rachel and Maria, who I ran with last summer/fall and both of them have been saying we should start running again. I agreed, but I couldn't seem to wrap my life or body around the idea. Today was the perfect day. Well, tonight was the night, anyway.

It was a stressful day (had an extra 4 children from 7:30am until 4:30pm.... they were good, but extra children just make a more wearying day) and then a frustrating evening (Mac and Dustin... they... er.... rubbed each other the wrong way tonight). I got the call from Maria in the afternoon and looked forward to it more and more as the day wore on. Or should I say, as the day wore on me?

The weather was actually nice today, which made the night perfect! I was a little nervous to run, I will admit. I was a novice runner last summer and had worked myself up to about 2 1/2 miles. I haven't done much, ok- anything, since then, except the aforementioned aerobics of the last two weeks and I was scared. But, my fear turned to elation as I paced myself around a 2.34 mile loop! We stopped and walked once in the middle but only for a very short distance. And we walked the last tiny bit before we reached her truck. I did have mild feelings of impending death as we sprinted the last bit, but, as you can see, I lived to report!

Go, body, GO!!!!!

(I will add... but only in parentheses... that Maria kicked my tRAsH in the sprint. But it's not a competition, right? I'll keep telling myself that, but next time, or maybe the time after that, Maria, you'd better watch your tRAsH!) ;-)

In Process....

OK... this is a very interesting process for me. If you want the whole story and you're just joining our "broadcast" you may want to read my first post on this subject called Food For Thought, and then read the comments, and then read the next post up called "I am" and the comments...

This is very exciting to me. First of all, Maria... I hope you don't mind, but as you are the catalyst for this process, I am going to be referring to you.

Here's what I've noticed about ME: I wrote the post "Food For Thought" and was excited to share something I thought was cool. Maria, my great new friend who is teaching me a lot about myself (whether she knows it or not), made some comments. I read her comments and my "ego" (as described by Eckart Tolle... GET THE BOOK!) or my "harsh inner voice" cringed and said... "Yep, see that's what happens when you say anything! Your friends think you're a retard and you ARE!!! You don't have a voice in this world and you are wrong! You should just delete this post!" (I know Maria, likely, didn't think any of that. That's just how I have operated my whole life) There are many mean things that that stupid voice said to me in those few seconds in which I read a few comments from a well meaning friend who loves discussion. (run-on sentence, I know...) Weird? Maybe so, but that's been my way, which has been fairly unconscious most of my life. I have only recently even heard the voice in my conscious mind.

So... in my way, I tried to "fix" things. That's what I do. (or have done in the past) I posted a new post trying to clarify what I meant, and make myself feel less retarded. Well, my friends, let me tell you what happened. I read and wrote and wrote some more. While doing that I clarified my own beliefs in my own heart. I felt good about what I wrote about.

Then, I check back in a little while. More comments from my friend Maria. But this time, because I was more clarified in what was truth for me... I didn't feel so vulnerable. I read her comments and the voice was not so loud. It did speak, and I heard it and didn't listen much. I was able to read her comments more objectively. I thought about replying to the comments, but I wasn't ready. I have thought on it all day and here's what I have discovered!!! I am so excited about this!

Maria posted this: I disagree with you though on one point. I think we are the collection of our experiences. Why else did we submit to a mortal probation. If we were perfect before we came, we would have no need of a testing ground here in order to achieve exaltation.

I thought about this as I was in the shower (best thinking place on earth). Firstly, I didn't say I was perfect before I came here. I only said that I was already who "I am" when I arrived. I believe that I came here as "ME" and that the submission to mortal probation is a necessary step.

In the shower, I thought about things from my past. My "ego" told me that Maria was right, (because it always tells me that I am wrong...) and that my past experiences do define who I am. I thought about that for a little bit. I thought about some of the things from my past. I started bawling as I tried to reconcile that those experiences ARE who I AM. I beat my fist against the tile as I cried out loud. I AM NOT MY MOTHER LOSING HER TEMPER. I AM NOT THOSE GIRLS IN SIXTH GRADE TELLING ME MY HAIR LOOKED LIKE A RAT'S NEST. I AM NOT MY SISTER SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF HER LUNGS THAT SHE HATED ME. I AM NOT THE TATTLE TALE LITTLE SISTER WHO'S BROTHER COULDN'T STAND HER. In those moments, crying in the shower, I learned that that is truth for me, and I know it from the bottom of my heart. My past experiences are my map for growth, but, I say again, who "I am" is not the collective of those experiences. Even the good experiences. I believe I CHOSE these lessons, in the same way, I believe, we choose our families. These are the only the lessons that "I" needed, and that is why they are in my past but they do NOT define "me", unless I let them. It is a choice... and THAT is what separates us from the rest of the creatures on this earth - choice.

Maria also said: And as for the voices, there are many trying to infiltrate our sense of worth and value. We need to trust our own inner voice, which if we believe in a Heavenly Father, is the resonation of His voice as well. We can't shut out all the voices, just the unimportant ones.

This is something I agree with wholeheartedly. The chatter in my mind comes mostly from that crappy voice that doesn't serve me in any good way... except to be the dark so I can know the light. And for that, I am grateful.

It has been such a blessing to have Maria leave her comments. Iron sharpens iron. Because of her input, I have been able to solidify what I believe. So, thanks Maria... Here's to future "discussions"!