Random Thoughts

The first couple of days that Grace was here I had to push my sluggish body into keeping a baby's schedule and crawling around on the floor. I heard my knees pop a couple of times. My hip made a few cries for mercy as I tried to multi-task while holding a squiggly baby.  By the third day I think I got my groove back. My arms remembered how to enfold a baby as if the memory was embedded in the unused muscles.  Rocking soothed me as well as the baby. Tiptoeing past the sleeping baby's room reminded me of quietude's sweetness.  Old pleasures returned as Gracie experienced new things. Watching a little girl learn to pull herself up and wobble on unsteady feet. Listening as she discovered her song by beating on a Tupperware tom tom with a wooden spoon. Repeating words like kit-tee, ma-ma, G-Pa and Hallelujah Jesus! to help build her vocabulary.  Okay, so she didn't quite catch on to Jesus words, but she did laugh whenever we shook our hands in the air. That's a good star...

"Can you be truly grateful for EVERYTHING in your life? Even the circumstances, situations and/or people that are challenging? Christine Hassler* Here it is 2:00pm on Thanksgiving day. I am up, showered and dressed. I've walked the dog, made stuffing, peeled potatoes and stuck my hand elbow deep into a turkey carcass. Oh, happy day! About five last night I started flying around the house like a winged monkey in the Wizard of Oz. I frantically, vacuumed the whole house. I got down on my knees to clean cat puke stains that have mocked me for a month. I let the sweat drip off my brow like I'd run a marathon as I wondered what was wrong with me. Then I had the tiniest of flashbacks to a time after I'd first been diagnosed with depression. I'd been laying around worrying my mother about my moodiness for days. All of a sudden as if stuck in the butt with a cattle prod, I got all crazy about cleaning my room. And when my poor mother ventured in to see what was going on,...

"Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry." Lyman Abbott I was having a conversation with my son recently. Actually, he was wound up tight as a drum so he was talking and I was mainly listening. I marvel at his grown-up take on life. There was a time I wasn't sure he'd survive adolescence, let alone be able to talk about it with intelligence and candor. I marvel at the things he says and wonder when he got so smart! In this conversation he said, "Our anger doesn't go away. I've just learned to tame it." Huh? This wild ass, quick-triggered, you-don't-know-who-you're-messin'-with madman has learned to tame his anger? That made me chuckle. But I realized the very fact that he's still alive and not doing time in prison is because he has tamed, if not all, at least some of his demons. Later on I started thinking about what he said. I wanted to disagree. If anger doesn't go away why have I spent so much t...

"No one can be uncheered by a balloon." Winnie the Pooh And no one can stay angry when they see things like this: Or this: Or this: Or this: Or this: Not so pissy now, Merry ME

"Get mad, then get over it." Colin Powell How is it that one can lie in bed next to the man she loves, eventually kiss him goodnight, listen to his breathing as it becomes one with her own - inhale, exhale, inhale - thank God for this man's presence in her life then wake up the next morning and feel like she wants to kick him in the ass? Or yell at him, "What's up? I'll tell you what's up!" before her own eyes are even opened enough to see his sweet face? And since I'm asking, how is it that a person can sleep for six or seven or eight hours, and still wake up feeling weighted down and cranky? One doesn't need to be Sigmond Freud to diagnose a rather severe case of anger. And it might not take a rocket scientist to look at a certain girl's stressful life and see possible anger atoms swimming in every corner of the house. Even an American child, who's never lived in a place where he has to be careful of stepping on land mines, can tel...

1. The smell of a fresh cut pine tree: When I was vacuuming this morning, I realized that even though the 2006 Christmas tree is long gone, there was still a pile of fallen needles behind the table where it stood. I realize that by making this observation, then posting it on a blog that I am letting the world know my cleaning habits are subpar. Then again, the fact that I've only told three people about my blog and they love me despite the fact that I am house cleaning-challenged, I shouldn't have too much to worry about. My point, however, is not my cleaning habits or lack thereof, it is that even though it's been over a month since the tree was put up, lit up, decorated and dismantled, the trail of needles still smelled fresh. How cool is that? There seems to be some kind of phenomenon that happens when the vacuum picks up the neeldes, then swirls them around in its vacuum vacuum that re-energizes the pine molecules and sends the scent of piney woods through the room. It...