A Musing Mother 6

I don't know why I am so bothered by certain stages my children inevitably go through.  They all go through the temper tantrum phase, nose picking phase, and, my personal favorite, defecating on the carpet phase. Yet the hardest to handle is the God phase.  Why is that, you might ask.  Perhaps I don't have clear vision of God.  I thought I did but the little rascals have blown my perception of being on a spiritual pinnacle right out of the water. Forget the birds and bees, the God phase is infinitely more difficult to explain than reproduction.  It all comes down to their obsession about death. Where do you go when you go to heaven?  Explain all you want about harping angels, Heavenly Father and Jesus, the little tyke wants to know where you GO in a physical sense.  Describe it.  Is it a ballpark, does it have a swingset, are there potties, can you take your cat, can you still drink water or eat ice cream, get cable, take blankie, go to Disneyland...

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Inside my body, I host a little factory.  I have tiny workers on a production line, creating Estrogen.  They've had job security for the past 30 years.  They don't read the newspapers or get time off to watch the news so I am puzzled how they knew about the recession.  Apparently, the factory boss has been laying off a lot of workers.  In fact, I'm suspecting there has been a hostile takeover by a competitor factory called Testosterone. Either way I still have to deal with the fallout. Whiskers. Thanks to Brooke Shields, my eyebrow plucking was minimized to simply separating my unibrow.  Once I outgrew that, I just coasted along with the occasional maverick hair breaching a mole. However, I am a woman with sisters.  My sisters scrutinize any and all possible flaws.  This year on vacation one sister found a renegade hair and screamed in horror.  The other sister, present at the time, reached over and yanked it out.  This is my Italian sis...

I spent a great deal of the 1990's watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and listening to Captain Picard discuss, at length, the delicacy of the time and space continuum. Basically, don't mess with it. On board the Starship Enterprise, when faced with the decision to enter a wormhole that transforms all life on earth into peace loving people who give to the poor (if they existed anymore) and never use the middle finger for an obscene gesture but merely pull their car to the side of the road so another can pass them with pleasantries exchanged all in a complex reaction to the accidental murder of a single cockroach on cockroach planet OR staying the course and annihilating a solar system by offering a Diet Coke to an alien life form, always choose option #2. Why?  I don't know.  That is my quandary of with String Theory and Einstein.  I simply don't get it.  But that is all part of the "Prime Directive" which drives all decisions on the Starship...

Some things are simply best left unsaid. Case in point.

In the afternoon of a hot day the realization hit me.  The children were all downstairs playing, watching T.V., or reorganizing the food storage.  I couldn't hear them except very softly.  I was so tired.  The bed was made but inviting me.  I saw opportunity. I laid down, closed my eyes and allowed my mind to free fall.  Colors started to organize themselves into pictures.  I could almost make out the images. Almost. The doorbell rang.

The marriage bed is sacred. Okay? No children allowed. Unless you spoil your youngest child or are too tired to keep carrying him back to his own bed. Or if you really hate sleeping in his bed with him. But it's a king size bed. Plenty of room. Given, he takes up a lot of the extra room and encroaches on my personal space, but I have my excuses. Every night he is put in his own bed. Every morning he wakes up in our bed. The older brother and dad had a cub scout campout on Friday night. I saved myself the trouble and let him sleep on his dad's side of the bed. It's a spacious king size bed. Did I mention that? In the early dawn hours I awoke with his little body curved around mine and his hand resting lightly on my cheek. I don't wonder why I'm tired all the time, anymore.   (This piece could also be entitled, "What Nancy Does When the Family Sleeps.")

I began blogging over two years ago.  What I have never admitted to anybody (even to myself) is that I started this blog as a means to cope with my own life journey.  Like anybody else, I was struggling with making sense of a couple of experiences that were life changing.  I was angry, bitter, sad, and anxious.  I questioned my faith, my church, my purpose, and God. I have stumbled, cried, prayed, and also had some sacred and personal experiences I could not have had if I'd not been climbing my mountain. I have been a recipient of tender mercies that I would not have recognized had I not been seeking reprieve. I have had the opportunity, on many occasions, to witness and recognize that my Heavenly Father knows who I am.  I have cried in anguish then gotten up, dressed, gone to work, fed kids, shopped at Costco.  I had to keep going.  My family still needed me.  And so He answered me at Costco, at work, through a blog, a scripture, a thought, even...

Do you know what I love? Compliments and positive strokes. I don't even care if they are sincere. I am that shallow. Without further ado, I will spotlight a wonderful blog by Sheila, a crazy woman who likes to run and loves to read. Every week she sponsors a meme so we can all share what we've been reading and what we have sitting on our nightstands. I'd take a picture of my alarm clock but I haven't seen it in months. I wonder if it's still there. Anyway, the woman is brilliant and happens to have excellent taste. For instance, I grabbed something totally random off her latest post. Here it is: Last weeks winner (using Random.Org) was: Nancy at A Musing Reviews and I have to confess I have been reading Nancy’s blog at A Musing Mothe r and she seriously cracks me up! You may need to check this out. See what I mean? The woman is a brilliant writer and exudes intellect and impeccable taste. Just in case you want to check her out, along with a couple hundre...

My life is boring.  My rolls are rising and I'm about to brush egg whites over them.  I'm also going to go outside and pick beans and squash for dinner.  I might even see if we have carrots to eat.  And of course I'll make sure to kick the dog in passing. It's true.  Eventually we all turn into our parents in some form.  Much cooler, though.  Oh, and I guess we probably leave certain aspects of our parents behind like my mother's OCD.  Wait.  Nope.  I brought that one along for the ride then handed the crown to my daughter.  Wish I would have brought my mother's patience of Job. But I am old, boring, and so serious.  But I bought a cute skirt on Macy's this week so at least I'm stylin'.  Now you're just jealous, aren't you.

This week I am participating in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop. I chose a prompt and then took literary liberties. Writer's Prompt: Describe the first date you went on in a boy’s car. I wondered if I still had a boyfriend.  I mean, I'd been dating him for about 10 months but I kind of went M.I.A. the past two.  I'd just come home from an adventure out of the country and he hadn't called.  I lamented the state of my love life to an acquaintance, Scott.  He had the perfect guy for me.  Of course he did.  Everybody did.  More often than not, it was a charity case.  Worse, I was the charity case and the guy wasn't any winner which hurt my ego. I was 25 years old, single, and becoming a menace to society. "What's wrong with him," I demanded. "Nothing."  Pause.  "He's going into social work."  I could think of worse things. He called me a couple of days later.  We talked, had a good conversation and he asked to take me out to...

I am the ringmaster. In one ring I have a lion tamer.  The lion may be angry and agitated, the lion tamer has one job.  Poke that lion and get him/her to roar.  The lion tamer will get scratched and smacked around a bit.  My job is to intervene when the lion gets too angry.  There's a performer above me on the tightrope.  She's a little uncertain how to proceed but she will only take steps if I'm not looking and on her own terms.  Regardless, my job is to catch her if she falls.  She insists she won't fall. The flying trapeze performer is gaining confidence.  She is flinging herself onto different performance vehicles and her partners swing past her, catch her, she returns to her own swing, and all the while she is not to know that there is a safety net under her.  I am her safety net.  Oh, and she's in a different tent. And then we have the ring that keeps changing performances but the performer stays the same.  He juggles for...