Five Things

A couple of things:

1) We are moving in 13 days.

2) I think that the best television shows of all time are: 1. Gilmore Girls, 2. Friday Night Lights, and 3. Freaks and Geeks, with an honorable mention going out to Everwood.

3) When people choose to birth in a hospital "just in case something goes wrong", that makes me wonder why we don't spend our entire lives in a hospital "just in case something goes wrong." (I think I will expand on this thought in a longer post someday. Please remind me to do so.)

4) We have made $1,380 selling all of our stuff so far. We still need to sell our bed.

5) This picture:

My Kids Today

This is what my children looked like today:

Life is in the Journey

Sometimes people say to me, "Oh, I bet you can't wait for Vernon to be done with school. That will be such a relief."

I don't really see it like that. To me, I have enjoyed every part of this journey. It doesn't really matter if Vern is in school, out of school, working as a schoolteacher, working as a chiropractor... whatever. It is all just a part of life and I have enjoyed seeing the journey unfold.

I haven't played "the waiting game" (waiting to get done with school, waiting to live somewhere else, waiting to get married, waiting to earn more money... in order for life to be better) since I was in high school when I dreamed of moving to California where I would meet River Phoenix and live happily ever after. Our eyes would meet as I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard, we would fall instantly in love, get married, start a family, and all my dreams would come true.

That is a game of my youth, and it is not worth living today.

I sometimes hear people say, "Oh, I am too old to go back to school. I would be 33 when I got done." (Or 42 or 57 or whatever). But here's the thing... you're going to be 33 anyway. So why not do what you want to do, no matter what, instead of getting hung up on numbers (financial numbers, age, etc)?

That's what we're doing, and it has been an excellent journey so far.

The Giggler Treatment

by Roddy Doyle
112 pages

I just HAVE to recommend this book to everybody in the universe. It is such a great children's book. So well-written. So funny. Talks about dog poop. What more could you want?

Ocean, age 7 - "The Giggler Treatment is a good book and it's about Gigglers putting poo on the path, but I can't tell you about the rest of the story because it's a really, really, really good story."

Ezra, age 4 - "I like the The Giggler Treatment because there's these guys Robbie, Jimmy, Kayla, Billy Jean and Mr. Mack. And Robbie and Jimmy always say, "Me head! Me toe! Me window! Me finger!"

Why Don't Friends With Kids Have Time?

There is this great article going around Facebook, from Carolyn Hax's Tell Me About It column in the Washington Post. It's called Why Don't Friends With Kids Have Time.

Click on the link to read it in its entirety and then come back here.

Done?

Okay. Good.

If you're lying to me and were too lazy to read the entire thing (hey, I've been there, done that), I'll summarize: A lady writes into the advice column and asks Why doesn't my friend with kids have time for me anymore?

And columnist Carolyn Hax responds with possibly the best six paragraphs ever written in the history of the universe:

When you have young kids, your typical day is: constant attention, from getting them out of bed, fed, clean, dressed; to keeping them out of harm's way; to answering their coos, cries, questions; to having two arms and carrying one kid, one set of car keys, and supplies for even the quickest trips, including the latest-to-be-declared-essential piece of molded plastic gear; to keeping them from unshelving books at the library; to enforcing rest times; to staying one step ahead of them lest they get too hungry, tired or bored, any one of which produces the kind of checkout-line screaming that gets the checkout line shaking its head. 

It's needing 45 minutes to do what takes others 15. 

It's constant vigilance, constant touch, constant use of your voice, constant relegation of your needs to the second tier. 

It's constant scrutiny and second-guessing from family and friends, well-meaning and otherwise. It's resisting constant temptation to seek short-term relief at everyone's long-term expense. 

It's doing all this while concurrently teaching virtually everything -- language, manners, safety, resourcefulness, discipline, curiosity, creativity. Empathy. Everything. 

It's also a choice, yes. And a joy. But if you spent all day, every day, with this brand of joy, and then, when you got your first 10 minutes to yourself, wanted to be alone with your thoughts instead of calling a good friend, a good friend wouldn't judge you, complain about you to mutual friends, or marvel how much more productively she uses her time. Either make a sincere effort to understand or keep your snit to yourself.