Missing Manic Monday: Investment

Hi there.  Sorry I fell off my little bloggy wagon again.  We've just busy with the first week of school for Mac and finishing the rest of the basement.  Someday I might put pictures up of these remodels, but not tonight.  I'm just hoping to make it through the post without falling asleep. 

I'm really tired.

So, Random Word Generator has spoken and the word is "Investment". 

So many things come to mind with this word... duplex, basement finishing, banking, equity, 401K... blah, blah, blah. 

I could write about any of those... but I won't. 

I'll write about my most rewarding and challenging investments.  Each one took nine months to gestate and will take a lifetime to mature.  Each was a physical investment of my own body.  Each is an emotional investment as I navigate the rocky waters of motherhood.  But the prize... the joy and satisfaction when you watch it all unfold...

Best investments I've ever made.

Missing Manic Monday: Bit

When my Grandma Carol passed away I inherited a double bed that was in her house.  It was the very bed Dustin and I always slept in when we went to stay there.  This bed is now where Mac sleeps.  I was tucking him in tonight and as he was saying his prayer I had my face down on his bed.  As I laid there with my nose buried in his blankets, I realized that there is a lingering bit of the scent of my grandma's house embedded in the mattress.  It was a very faint trace, but as I caught that smell I started crying.

I would give almost anything in this world to be able to walk into my precious grandmother's house one more time and inhale that distinct Grandma-Carol's-house smell, walk up her brown-carpeted stairs, into her kitchen and see her sitting at her dining room table or on her couch and soak up the warmth of her smile as her face lights up in greeting.

I miss her so acutely in this moment. 

Grandma Carol and my baby Ella Brae, 2002

Friday's Fabulous Five and MMM Preview

1- Dams breaking.

2- 1 hour massage gift certificate.

3- Overtime pay.

4- Horizon full of the promise of autumn.

5- Happy Birthday to me.



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Missing Manic Monday word preview:


BIT


Happy Friday.

Missing Manic Monday: Noise

Every night it's the same. 

'Ridiculous,' I tell myself.

'Why do you do this?', I question.

'Sleep should be a priority,' I reprimand.

But it isn't.  Night holds freedom from the demands of the sunlit hours.  The noise of responsibility is sleeping, blanketed by the darkness.

And I just never quite want it to end.

Friday's Fabulous Five and MMM Preview

Whoops.  The blog revival fell flat on it's face for a few days.  (Clancy likes alliteration)  But, I can persist. 

1- I am now the proud owner of a four bedroom TWO bathroom house!  (I've been the owner of a four bedroom, one bathroom house for almost six years but now we have two bathrooms, officially.  Actually, if we're getting technical, I was the owner of a two bedroom one bathroom house for the first three or so years and then it became a four bedroom and now it's a two bathroom too.  It's just all so wonderful...)

2- Android phones are awesome.  AWESOME, I say!

3- I was able to catch up with an old friend today.  Always a bonus.

4- My sister, Sarah, brought her kids up last weekend and then left them here with my mom so my kids have had playmates all week.  Cousins are the best.

5- Money seems to show up right when we need it, often in unexpected ways.  I'm grateful for that.



Oh, and if anyone wants to play Missing Manic Monday on Monday next, the word is:


NOISE

So, come back Monday and leave a comment if you want to play. 

Missing Manic Monday

It's a blog revival, apparently.  I find myself missing my old schedule of posts.  I always knew what I would be posting on certain days and that's a good thing for a blogger like me.  I need that.

Mondays used to be my favorite.  There was a guy named Mo who made up a meme called Manic Monday.  For this meme, Mo would choose a random word every Monday and then everyone who played would write whatever they wanted that included that random word.

I am missing this every Monday, not only because I haven't been blogging, but because Mo stopped doing his meme.  His heart wasn't in it anymore, which I can certainly relate to.  I now have no Manic Monday to turn to.  :(

So, I've decided that I'll just pick my own random word for the Mondays that I blog.  I'll aim for getting something regular going, but this blog revival might be a slowish process, or maybe I'm just going to jump right in and blog a lot like the old days??.... who knows.

Anyway, I am using  a random word generator website, so I won't try to cheat.

And today's random word is

LAG



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I remember walking to school as a kid with my little sister.  We were often late in getting out the door so we would be in a hurry as we walked.  (ME late?  Yes, I know it's shocking to imagine, but I am late sometimes in my life)  My dear, sweet Lacy was a dilly-dallying kind of girl sometimes (a lot of times) and she just didn't seem to feel the stress I did about getting to school on time.  Lacy would often lag behind a little and drag her feet stating that she was too tired to hurry. 

Like any good big sister, if she lagged behind I simply punched her in the face.

Just kidding.

When my cute little Lacy would lag (Clancy likes alliteration), I would make up games to try to get her to hurry, because, let's face it, getting mad at her just made her mad back and that would make her move even slower.

Two games are prominent in my memory.  One, I would tell her to RUN!  She didn't like that very much so I would tell her I'd pull her for a minute and then she could pull me for a minute.  Really what we'd do is hold hands and I would pull her foward in a run and when she reached the length of our holding hands arm span she would pull me forward, running all the while.  Then I'd pull her again and she'd pull me and we'd run in that disjointed fashion and make it there faster.

The second game I really remember well was so silly.  I'm just embarrassed to even write it.  In our tardy moments, I tell Lacy to pretend that Dr. Harding, our principal, was the king of our school and Pat, the secretary, was the queen.  If we got there after the bell then we, the lowly servants, would be punished for our crime and get our heads chopped off.  She knew it was pretend, but it always made us hurry just a little faster.

And that's it for today's Missing Manic Monday post... for now... I'm literally falling asleep as I type.  Maybe I'll add more to the post later, or maybe I'll be correcting the typos I've missed while editing.  Just now, as I woke with a jerk sitting up in my computer chair, I was having a dream about laying sandstone rocks on our new patio instead of editing this post.  Pretty soon I'll be drooling.

So, forgive the mistakes.  I'll make it right later.  Or not.