Sooo . . . What silliness to talk about today?

Because silliness seems to be all I’m capable of today.

Well . . . there’s the fact that my dear husband made coffee again today.  While I was sleeping an extra 45 minutes, making up for the time I spent up with Ruth last night.  He also made hot cereal and straightened the kitchen some.  After thanking him, I said, “So should I blog about this, too?”  “It wouldn’t hurt.”    So here it is.  He’s the bestest man ever.  Really.  I got it good.

And . . . there’s the fact that as I write this my two girls are locked in the living room–one on the couch, one wandering around aimlessly–eating whole apples and watching Sesame Street.  Yep.  Exactly how I pictured my mornings as a progressive stay-at-home mom back when I had only one wee one to care for.  We used to have snack times.  We used to only eat at the table.  A toddler, especially, would never be out and about, wandering with food at random times.  And eating while watching TV?  Scandalous!  Certainly not!

Well.  There they are.  Munch.  Crunch.  Slurp.  Drip.  And here I sit.  Writing and drinking coffee I didn’t even have to make.  Barefoot, make-up free, dirty dishes scattered about me.  Nice.  I am Super Mom.  Hear me . . . yawn.

Ruth has been wandering around eating all morning.  I’m hoping the fact that it’s all healthy food will make up for the steady stream of calories entering her little body.  She already had breakfast with Ry before I got up.  A banana was involved, I’m not sure what else.  But then she starts helping herself to stuff.  Like we have a freezer-on-the-bottom refrigerator/freezer.  So she just opens that door right up.  Grabbing a bag off the door, she lifts it up, looks at it:  frozen blueberries.  “NnnoooooO.”  Sets it back down.  Next bag:  frozen raspberries.  “Rapbeyies,” as she lifts the bag up to me.  Sure, why not?  I grab the bag, she grabs the bowl.  Today I insist on the table because for the last week and a half she’s been eating her frozen raspberries while sitting on the little stool on the floor.  But we’re civilized people, so I insist on the table.  And she even insists on the spoon.  Nice.  I don’t know how she eats raspberries frozen.  I get brain freeze just looking at her.

Now . . . couple of minutes later . . . Ruth wanders back out to the kitchen.  Opens up the pantry cabinet next to the fridge.  Pulls out the bottom drawer full of cans.  “Hmm.  NoooO.  NoooO.  Oo.  Deans.”  Picks up the can of kidney beans, hands it to me.  I grab the can, she grabs the bowl.  Again I insist on the table.  Again she insists on the spoon.  See?  We are civilized.

Hannah, of course, didn’t partake in all this snacking.  So, when 10:15 rolls around, she is ready for a snack.  She’d like an apple.  Well, then.  Full-of-berries-and-beans Ruth sees the apple.  She too would like an apple.  So there they are:  apples and Elmo.  I didn’t insist on the table.  And you don’t need a spoon for an apple.  And civilization is highly overrated.

Now, back to my coffee.  And my mess.  And tomorrow I’ll be a better mom and homemaker.  For afterall . . . tomorrow is another day.

And for today’s visual:  Ruth in the Living Room of the Perpetual Mess.

For the record, she has lovely silver and pink with bangles dress-up shoes under that blankie dress.

Another one of those days in the life of a SAHM

Blech. That kind of day. Blech blech blech. One of those days when I feel completely overwhelmed by the task at hand: guiding three people into healthy, productive, Godly adulthood all while making sure we’re not buried in an avalanche of toys and papers-from-who-knows-where and other miscellaneous junk nor dying from some dread disease due to the microorganisms having a field day on my floors and in my bathroom and kitchen, not to mention ensuring that we’re all eating healthy food, and in the meantime maintaining a marriage I’ll still be happy to be a part of when these three other people move out and I’m left staring at this guy, and this guy alone.  *sigh*

The thing is, I feel like I’m doing this in a vacuum.  I’ve said it before, I think.  I feel like I’m just taking shots in the dark, hoping and praying for the best, unable to see how successful (or not) I am for at least another twenty years.  AAAHH!!  Long range planning, you’re not kidding.  And the thing is, if I’m failing, it’s not just a building crumbling down or the end of a corporation–not that these are good things, mind you–it’s three people.  Three human beings living those healthy, Godly, productive lives, or sitting on Death Row with a trail of death and mayhem in their wake.  Ok, so there’s a whole lot in between, but I told you.  It’s one of those days.  And these are the things that fly through my hyper-active brain on days like these.

There’s no immediate feedback.  Sure, my kids love me.  But I’ve seen kids love some monsters of parents.  Toddlers and young elementary school kids are programmed to love their parents.  The tragedy is when they’re knocking themselves out trying to perform well enough for their twisted parents to love them back.  I often worry I’m one of those twisted parents.  That’s when the Death Row image appears.

So.  No immediate feedback.  My husband tells me I’m doing a good job with the whole Mommy business, but he gets paid to tell people nice, encouraging things.  Although he doesn’t lie to his parishioners.  Really.  But he’s an optimist.  And I find those people suspect.

I need to find something to do that has immediate feedback (well, relative to the 20-year plan I’m on now, anyway).  Immediate feedback that I’m doing something well.  I need a hobby.  With instant gratification.  I have a cross-stitch project I started the summer before Isaac was born (um.  so that would be 7 1/2 years ago now, but who’s counting?).  It’s probably an hour from finished.  Maybe if I take that out tonight.  Then I’ll have nice neat little X’s and a complete picture to show me I’m not a complete failure of a person today.

Wow.  This is a whine of epic proportions.  Ok.  Ok.  Think.  Think.  Think.  Get yourself out of this!  If you’ve been reading my stuff since I started in the summer, remember those summer days when I locked myself in my bedroom with the air conditioner set at 67 and, lulled into relaxation by the AC’s white noise, I wrote here, reflected on the good in my life, and came to the end feeling much better for it?  Yeah.  It’s one of those days, but I’m not getting there.  Sure, now my heat is set at 67, so the temperature is the same, but the white noise is Clifford in the background and the buzzing knowledge that Hannah is turning into a vegetable while zoning out on PBSKids.  And my thoughts are just not taking me to that magic land of refreshment.

Ok, little Calvinist.  Here’s your first clue.  When you declare:  “Get yourself out of this!”  That’s when all the sirens and bells and whistles are supposed to go off in your thought-soaked, self-defeating brain.  Ahh.  Yes.  I can’t get myself out of this.  And that’s OK.  Because praise be to God, it’s not all up to me to get myself out of this.  “One of those days” is one of those days to fall prostrate (literally or figuratively) before the One who made me, the One who called me so clearly to this mission, this ministry, the One who promised to be with me always, the One who provides refreshment from a living water to a weary, thirsty soul.

It’s one of those days.  A day for prayer.  A day for Psalms.  A day of surrender.  Tears in my eyes, shoulders heavy and drooping, I proclaim “I cannot do this!!”  Lord, please do it for me.  Lift me up.  Carry me through.  Renew my trust that these three little people are your people, that you’ve placed them in just the home they need to be in order to grow into the people you’d have them be, to do the work you’d have them do.  Your people.  Not my people.  Remind me that you are more than big enough to heal them from my failures.  Remind me that my greatest responsibility is to demonstrate and witness to your love for them.  Return my focus to you; may I seek your approval and affirmation only.  Let that be sufficient.  Let you be sufficient.  Because you are sufficient.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Amen.

Productivity

I have totally disappeared off the face of the earth lately. Well. Off my blog anyway. The reason? My beautiful, purple, lap-dwelling companion is inoperable. I’m not sure what happened and I have made very little attempt to fix it yet, but I’m hopeful it will be up and running some time soon. As a result, I’m back to life as I lived it before my very own laptop came into my life last April. I can only use a computer when my husband is home and not working. That has really hampered my creative rambling time. I’ve definitely lost momentum here, but I’d like to gain some back. When I look back I find I had that nice stretch where I had a post every day and some pics to go along with them. Then my pics stopped. I think I lost my camera battery charger for a while. Good grief! Pitiful excuses. Anyway . . . I would like to go back to that. It was fun. And it was a good discipline for me to sit down every day and make something. I guess that’s why this blog is good for me. For me it’s productivity. It’ s making something. Something lasting and tangible.

Lasting and tangible productivity . . . not really a whole lot of that around here in SAHM-land. I mean there is lasting productivity: I’m working my tail off with my kids, trying to guide them into productive, Godly adulthood. And their adulthood, Lord willing, will outlast my own, so that sure is lasting. But it ain’t tangible. It’s nowhere near tangible. At this point I’m in the can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees stage, attacking each little moment with my eyes set toward the future but no ability to see just how the way this moment is handled will affect the future. Just shots in the dark, hoping and praying for the best. Mist and clouds and doubts and confusion abound. Nothing tangible here.

But there are tangible components to the life of this stay-at-home mom. There’s food to be cooked, kitchen and living room and bedrooms and so on and on to be cleaned, laundry to be done, laundry to be done, did I mention laundry to be done? So productive, tangible stuff does get done. I can smell and see and taste the food. First there’s a mess, then there’s not. I can see that. The laundry . . . well I’ve said far more than enough about laundry. Tangible productivity. But it ain’t lasting. Approximately 8 seconds after lunch is cleaned up it’s time to pull out afternoon snacks. The living room might be straight before everyone goes to bed, but Isaac wakes up before everyone else and by the time we reach the living room . . . well . . . a six-year-old boy has been productive all over it for an hour. The laundry never. ends. As soon as the last load for the day gets put away, everyone has to get undressed and put that day’s dirty clothes in their hamper. Nothing lasting here.

So that brings me to my little ramblings. Productivity. Lasting, tangible productivity. My fingers flying effortlessly across the keyboard at the speed of thought laying down words, sentences, paragraphs for as long as I choose to save them, putting ideas into heads which, for better or for worse, once they’ve arrived, remain. Filed away in the original hard drive. Even if it’s quickly forgotten, it’s stored somewhere. Lasting. Some may question the tangibility of words and thoughts. But it’s me. I really don’t need much more than that. That is my world, my tangible. Everything else, everything outside my thoughts, is a stretch.

My husband likes to make things with his hands . . . out of wood, leather, various animal parts . . . not kidding. Animal parts. Bones. Hides. Horns. Not brains yet, but I think they’re on his to-do list. I don’t make much with my hands. Well, unless you count this typing thing. Because my hands are definitely involved. I make things with my brain. I don’t have to touch it, see it, taste it for it to be tangible. I just have to think it, know it, feel it. Tangible. Something I can wrap my brain around with certainty. Tangible. . . Flake? Perhaps.

So, onward and upward . . . Back to productivity. Here’s my written pledge to try to do this blogging thing more. Not cuz I think I have something worthwhile to say, just because when I take the time to think it and write it down I come to the end of my day knowing I’ve at least done one thing today.