And I will always have gum (at least I could if I wanted to)

How pretty is this cake?  I bought it about a week ago when frugal, responsible Michael (somewhere his high school friends are laughing at that) sent me to the grocery store with meal plans for 14 days and the grocery list to match.  Fourteen Days.  That's two carts once everything is bagged.  I've mentioned how little I enjoy the weekly grocery trip, right?  And fourteen days - well, not only did that mean longer in the grocery store, but also that many days that I wouldn't have a single excuse to say, "Oh darn, let's just order out tonight - it would be so much easier.  Sigh.  

So, realizing how much money we were saving over that time period and how self-sacrificing it was of me to actually do the trip, I bought a CAKE.  A white cake with the whipped frosting, which puts all buttercreams to shame, and glorious life-is-actually-a-pastry red roses.  Not a single birthday or holiday in sight.  Jake and I poured over the choices - balloons, cupcakes with plastic animal heads on toothpicks . . . we settled on the roses, and I told him right then and there.  This is the reason you should want to be a grown up.

Admittedly, it didn't quite live up to my expectations.  The roses (the little tricksters!) were buttercream.  A store-bought kind of flavor that bled into the entire culinary experience, decreasing the allure.  But I was still so proud that I took this picture of what it means to get to make silly, inconsequential decisions all the time all on your own that could very well make life richer - at least for the evening.

The new book I'm reading (by the author we met) is set in Chicago.  How much do I love Chicago now?  I've had to research it for work, and I am so embarrassed that I didn't realize my pretty little midwest had such a treasure.  Because, you know, I'm claiming it now.  Navy Pier, Grant Park, Cloud Gate - the book talks about them all, and because I've researched them, I almost feel that I've seen and touched them - or at least that I have some sort of ownership in their greatness.  I still dream of New York, but People, Chicago is a train ride from here, and it is so on my list.  Someday I'll buy that train ticket just like I purchased that cake.  I wrote about the Art Institute of Chicago on the Student Travel blog today, and posted pictures of its miniature rooms display, which looks dee-lightful. Linking to that blog post justifies the fact that the writing of this one bled a teensy bit into the work day.  Which brings me full circle, because that's just what those buttercream roses did.  

I hope you dance

Another song title - I can't help it; they move me.  

This is just a little lesson from my journal sometime late fall/early winter of 1999, which some of you might remember as the best months of my LIFE, because they were the first few months of my motherhood.  I had started working from home that year too, and I was very happy in most things although as dramatic as ever in others.  One day I wrote in my journal while John Michael lay nestled on my bent legs - our favorite way to sit together.  And I wrote about how I was always penning the big emotions and giant dreams and plans but that someday, when I read my journal again, it might be interesting to me that John Michael was starting to grab at things and what movie we had watched the night before and that we'd decided to teach our kids to say "Papa" instead of "Daddy" because of cute little Emma Pihlstrom running through the Christmas tree farm calling her Swedish father that.

Last night I read the profiles for the American Idol contestants and loved the one who said that his goals in life were to be a good husband and father and to not have any regrets.  Eh?  You know we can see you on a reality television show designed to catapult you to vocal fame, right?  Of course he does.  But that's just the no regrets part.  He'll be okay if he's not catapulted to fame.  He just wouldn't be okay if he hadn't tried.

Then I downloaded I Hope You Dance to my iTunes today, a song I adore because of all the things it hopes you do every single day.  ("I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean" - LOVE THAT).  I have a lot of plans and dreams, but the goal is every day.  Because when you come to die, it's the way you lived those that you're going to care about - much more than how much can be written as your accomplishments.

Today, we hung out with our friend Zoe.  Jake is very into trains, and she happily played along.  She lives just down the street, and her mom is one of my best friends.  We probably won't always live just down the street from each other.  It's very cool, and I want to remember it.  

I also want to remember Michael and John right now.  They're watching the Mizzou game together.  I kind of care, but I just don't like to watch Michael yelling at those poor 19-year-old boys about their defense.  It makes me flinch for them.

And here's another thing Jake's into:  Apples.  He says it with Z's instead of P's, but he eats them clear down to the core - like scary close to eating the seeds, which I hear are poisonous.  It's especially cute because that dude rarely eats all of anything.

I won't normally tell you all my little details.  I just wanted to inspire you to take happy note of yours.

most exciting thing that ever exited a furniture truck outside my door

Important update to to the category of what I'm looking forward to most:  He's going to SING AND DANCE.  Hugh Jackman, I mean.  (pictured here by edison0618 on Flickr).  I heard it from his own mouth.  (Although not technically in person of course).  I stand firmly in the camp that believes almost any program - or, you know, moment in LIFE - is improved by a song and dance number.  I'd rather watch a really cheesy Nick-and-Jessica type variety show than song-less, monotonous reality t.v. any day.  So I have officially put this as number one - okay, maybe second to the montages - on my list. The Oscars are going to rock this year; I can feel it.

In other what-I-watched-while-recuperating-from-a-cold news, I saw The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants sequel the other day.  There was a great moment where America Ferrera's character talked about the delicious language used in the play she was rehearsing for.  She complained at how lazy we are now - how much prettier phrases were then and how much richer it felt to speak that way.  "Why don't people talk like that anymore?" she wailed.  I loved that part.  I love the idea that if we would just stop and savor the little things in life a little more, our lives would be so much richer.  We tend to live through life rather than in it sometimes. And I love it when a book or a movie suggests that we stop and take it in a bit. The  National Treasure movies have some great lines like that too, which brings me to my little Hollywood gem for the day.

Do you ever find yourself vaguely remembering a movie line?  You know it moved you, but you can't quite remember what it was.  Let me introduce you to (as if you didn't already know) a little thing called IMDB - the Internet Movie Database.  You know you can find out who was in what film there, but you can also find a wealth of great movie quotes.  The page is called "Memorable Quotes" for each movie, so I usually get there by typing that phrase and the movie title into a search engine.  You'll be spouting poetic in no time.  

In honor of living life richly, allow me to cyber-celebrate a little gift I received yesterday from The Man himself:  This dark wooden rectangle of wonderful, our new table.

We have never in our married life bought ourselves a table.  Hand-me-downs work just as well for eating on.  Only I so don't believe that now.  This glorious piece of furniture has officially become the centerpiece for my lucky life.  I touch it every time I walk by.  We christened it last night with company and everything - company I would have the previous night seated in the living room with a t.v. tray rather than sit at our chipped wooden table with the hard, flat decades-old benches.

I'm working on the song and dance routine as we speak.

cupcakes in manhattan

If you're one of those people who can't understand why people care when celebrities leave their homes and what they wear and which beaches they frequent, then you probably won't understand this.  But I have a tiny obsession with Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise.  It started because Katie was pregnant with Suri the same time I was pregnant with Jake.  And I kept hearing about the expensive layettes Katie bought and the two thousand dollar bassinet she purchased twice for different parts of the house, etc., etc.  Then not long after our babies were born, Tom and Katie got married, and I read of the designer gowns made just for little Suri and saw pictures of the castle they were married in.  Around that time I was holding Jake in my arms and looking out our big, sunshiny window onto the pretty street outside, and I asked him, "Would you be happier if your home were more like Suri's?"

He was way too young to answer me in words.  But I've never been more sure of anything than I was of his response.  

Now I still enjoy the pictures of Katie and Suri taking on Manhattan with Suri's adorable little dresses and Katie's cute mom-crop.  I loved the one recently where they were sharing cupcakes, because I'd read of Katie's love for them long before Suri was born.  I try not to think of their lives as better than mine - but just kind of parallel, with a lot more cameras around.  It's been over a year since the last paparazzi shot of Jake and I - this one above while watching the homecoming parade in our small town.  And I don't think it really counts as paparazzi when the guy gets you to sign a release afterwards.  It's not exactly cupcakes in Manhattan, but it was our life, and we were totally starring in it.

Have you seen The Holiday?  Because this is the perfect time for yet another life-altering movie quote:

Arthur:  Iris, in the movies we have leading ladies and we have the best friend.  You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend.

Iris:  You're so right.  You're supposed to be the leading lady of your own life, for God's sake!

I'm thinking all those great movie lines we quoted last week - if we apply them - can help us play the leading roles in our own lives.  It's taken a while, but at this point I don't watch the celebrities because I wish I were them.  I don't watch them for their clothes or their bags or their shoes or their shoe closets.  I watch them because bits and pieces of their lives are just exactly like ours, and it's fun to see that celebrated and photographed and put in a shiny magazine.  Did you see Brad and Angelina navigating the airport with six kids?  The next time you walk out the mundane - imagine a photographer cares.  It could totally elevate the experience for you - and remind you who's playing the lead. 

it certainly is audacious

When I first met my surgeon, I had only been living with a cancer diagnosis for a few days. I was terrified and knew nothing. I thought I would read my death sentence in his face immediately along with a sorrowful apology that he couldn't do much for me. When he walked in the room smiling, my fear literally disappeared out the door behind him. He joked with me about my name because of the Seinfeld reference. He didn't say anything about my disease at first, so it wasn't his plan that made me brave. It was his attitude. I knew that whatever the fight would be, I could do it with him.

President Obama has that effect when he speaks. When he gave his inaugural address, I felt completely swept up in all the hope so many people were putting in him and the determined way he's meeting it. I found myself wanting him to tell us what to do. I wanted him to say, "Be kind. Love each other. In these frightening times, find a way to help not just yourself but your neighbor. Because if we all do that, the climate will change, and the economy will follow." Idealistic much? Oh yea.

I told you the world just lost a wonderful man named Keith Lawson. He moved to my hometown not long before I was born in it, and soon founded the food pantry that is still going strong. I wrote about that food pantry in an article you can find on Radiant Magazine.  The idea in the article is completely awesome.  Unfortunately, I'm still not really practicing.  It's one thing to realize you're not a giver.  It's another to actually become one.  Keith really was one.  

I like to listen at a funeral or memorial service and take in all of the kind things said, wondering what people might say of me.  I leave funerals with more resolutions than at New Year's.  In this case, what I kept hearing was how much faith Keith had in people.  Everyone kept saying that:  "He believed in me."

One preacher said that what Keith really believed was God inside of us.  That's probably true, but it reminds me of a theory I heard in a movie - that we all began as one soul that then broke into two and then four, etc., so that we are all now tiny pieces of a whole.  I kind of believe that about God - that parts of him are in all of us, different aspects more pronounced in you than in me and vice versa.  So that we can never truly know Him on earth unless we let in a whole lot of different kinds of people.  That's kind of what it means to me to believe in people.  

And it's how I feel about America's economy crisis.  I know that we could really fail this test.  We could all turn to greed and fear and burrow into our various holes with our various stashes of money, and everything would fall apart.  But I believe in us more than that.  I think we'll learn how giving is the best way to receive and that even though the unstoppable greed of some may have gotten us in this mess, it will be the hard work and sacrifice of the rest of us that gets us out.  And we'll do that, because of the part of us in which good people believe.  You have to admit - even if I'm wrong, I'd rather weather the storm with hope than without.

why I blog at all

I've been wanting to do a post like this for a while, ever since a friend raised the question of my intent here, wondering if I expect input or perhaps don't enjoy it, whether I'm entertaining you or just perhaps myself.  Another friend thinking of starting a blog herself also asked me why I do it, and thinking about all the reasons why was just too fun.  So I thought I'd write them out here and see what other bloggers would add.  

Earlier this week, Drew turned around at the table where he was doing homework and said, "Hey, Mo-om.  Guess what one of my spelling words is this week?  WRITER!"  You can't imagine how it thrilled me to know that he had any comprehension at all that I would care about that.  He must actually consider me one of those, despite the fact that he's 7, so he doesn't exactly browse the blogging community, and there isn't a single book in Barnes and Noble with my name on it.  

And that is the first reason I blog.  Because I wanted to write.  A good friend said of me when I was in high school that I wrote well but hadn't yet found my voice.  "How the heck do you find that?" I asked my mom.  And she said, "You find it in your grocery list.  And all kinds of other common things you can write every day.  Keep doing them, and eventually you find your voice."  I thought a blog would be even better than a grocery list. 

Also, I wanted to write for people.  When I was just writing for myself, it was too easy to skip it.  I heard on the radio the other day, "We judge ourselves by what we are capable of, but others judge us by what we have already done."  Another thing my mom always said was to "discipline your art".  Too many people out there "should" or "would" or "probably could", and not enough do.  You have to put some work into it if you want to produce anything of worth.  I thought having readers would be a good way to make myself keep writing, even when it seemed easier to quit.

Blogging is hugely, hugely, ginormously self-indulgent.  I'm well aware of that.  The other day Drew was telling John about a girl he likes.  The only thing I know of her is that she has freckles.  And this is what he said, "I hope I recognize her my whole life."  Having a blog gives me permission to write down things like that.  And you kind people read it.  Me?  Self-indulged.

But my hope, and another reason I keep doing it, is that it will also entertain or move you.  That at some point at least someone will say, "I totally get that."  A part of me has this crazy need to find the common denominators in humanity.  I want to discover and record the way I feel about things with the delusion that at least some of them will make all of humanity nod its head, "Ah, yes.  We totally get it too."  There have to be some things like that.  The thrill and the ache of being a parent, the need for love, dreaming big.  I keep writing and writing and writing - just hoping something I say will get that big universal nod.  Indulge much?  Yes, I already told you that.  But if I get a nod here and there, then I figure I have given as well as received.

So that's why I  blog.  I started it for me.  I keep it up for you . . . and me.

How about the rest of you bloggers?  Or maybe those of you considering it.  What are your thoughts?

I'm Afraid I'll Be Glad When It's Over

This is Sarah Dunn, previously mentioned in the comments section on another post and also the friend who gave me her seat ticket from Regis and Kelly one very big year in my life. This time, it's not a ploy to get you to comment, Sarah. It's just that I'm watching the debate and planning to bring up politics again, so I thought a picture of you, the girl who went to a political rally for her tenth wedding anniversary, would be appropriate.

Most of you dear people who read my blog would say that the only way to vote responsibly is to study the candidates. Some of you would add, "and to pray." I admit when it comes to studying, I'm failing this course. I study writing and parenthood and books I need to read and educational attractions in Washington D.C. and museums in Chicago. But I just haven't made the time to compare voting records, figure out what the heck they were actually voting on, and research the financial data that would tell me once and for all what's wrong with our economy and which guy has the right idea for fixing it. Truthfully, I have begun to wonder if that is even possible.

Is it possible to truly understand what's wrong with our economy and who has the right idea for fixing it? Is it truly possible for me - a girl in small town Missouri who is much more obsessed with her 2-year-old than with foreign policy - to understand today whether or not we should have gone to Iraq? Whether or not withdrawing now would be a defeat? If the leaders of our nation can't agree on that, can I even begin to understand it?

I feel that because I have failed to study, and because I have lost a bit of faith in my ability to hear God speak on something like that - I've lost that faith because I know too many Christians absolutely convinced in opposing directions - I feel that because of those factors, what I'm left with is trying to figure out which candidate I believe. They fundamentally disagree on all of those big things - and fundamentally disagree is their phrase for it - the economy, Iraq - even each other. They disagree on each other. They tell me the other guy isn't telling me the whole story about his health care plan. They tell me the other guy is lying about what he supports, because he voted for this or that thing that proves it.

They each think they know what to do. And I feel that all I've left myself to vote with, is my heart. And whether or not I believe them.

Perhaps, without slinging anything too ugly or hateful, you could just give me some suggestions on how you came to your decision and what else you'll be carrying into the booth besides your heart. And if you even carry that - as I know of course, it can be misleading.

Finding the Happy Place

I discovered a book the other day that I haven't read - so this is probably poor blogging etiquette - but its premise just fascinates me.  The title is Happiness is a Serious Problem.  And the author suggests that despite the fact that we're all always shouting from the rooftops that everyone has the right to be happy, very few of us actually are.  People are unhappy all the time because they are satisfied with nothing.  The author then says that we all have "an obligation" to our children, to our spouses, "and to society" to be happy.  

I haven't read the book, so I can't thoroughly argue with or back up his reasoning.  All I know is, it feels true.  

I do feel that I owe Michael a certain amount of contentedness.  I fail a LOT.  But I like to think that I jump back from the failures more quickly than I used to.  I feel that I need to love what I have - and in those things I'm still seeking, somehow find joy in the journey.  It doesn't seem far-fetched, right?

I laugh a lot more since the whole cancer scare.  That out loud, good medicine, uninhibited laugh that I used to give Michael all the time before we were dating and I thought every word out of his mouth was the most clever thing I'd ever heard.  When I laugh like that, there's no room for anything but happy.  And I like that feeling.  And I like the effect it has on the people around me.  

I hate it when I wake up one day and realize I've been in a bad mood for so long that I can't remember why it started.  I hate it when I complain to Michael about the same thing all the time - some circumstance of my life that I simply cannot change.  I hate it when someone says "how you doing" as their greeting and I don't know what to say because I can't imagine that they have an hour.   I know all those moments will still happen sometimes, but that's why I want to read that book.  So I can quote it to myself and remind myself what I owe.

I think it's possible.  Two-day vacations at the Holiday Inn?  Awesome.  Half-hour less on the time card because Jake has a cold and needs extra attention?  Irreplaceable.   And our small, really old house is a lovely place to build memories.  And potty training doesn't last forever.  And if we can't buy every single thing we want, we can sure buy more than we used to.   And who needs that other stuff anyway?

It's really not that awful of an obligation.  The author of the book says happy people are more generous.  On the society level I think it looks like feeding the widows and the orphans.  At home I think it means a laugh.  That no matter what reaction Michael gets at work, no matter what the boys experience at school, they can always count on me to get it.

the I Love You list

I have been following the CaringBridge site for a young woman diagnosed with cancer when she was pregnant.  The baby was delivered early so the woman could receive treatment.  The baby struggles in an NICU now, trying to overcome her too-early start in life.  But the young woman lost the fight and passed away last week.  

Her husband writes beautifully of the entire sadness.  (You will need to enter your email address to view the journal).  He puts his emotions into words that are very moving.  In the post immediately after the news of her death, he published 101 things he had loved about his wife.  But here's the amazing thing - he wrote them long before she was even diagnosed.  He sent them to her in an email several years ago and was just reprinting it now for those of us following their story.  The list was just beautiful.  It said things like, "I loved when you taught me how to ice-skate", "I love it when you laugh at my jokes", "I love that you love your family so much", and "I love your bumper" - the last of which I'm pretty sure is code for something a little cheekier than an automobile - but I can't know for sure.  The list is very personal, including situations they had experienced together and a couple of inside jokes.

It moved me.  One hundred and ONE - that's quite a few.  And what moved me the most, of course, is that she got to see it herself.  She knew all those things that he loved about her long before she left.  

Um, do I actually have to tie up the moral here?  Because I don't think I have time.  Perhaps you could just listen to the scratching of my pen:  "Dear Michael, I love the way you sign your cards to me . . .  I love your chiseled jaw . . . I love that when we were in Silver Dollar City on our anniversary, you missed the kids . . ."

"Dear John, I love that you iron your shorts."

"Dear Drew, I love your sense of humor."

"Dear Jake, I love when you get thirsty and tell me so by bringing me the jug of milk."

being present

This weekend it's my mom who has the kids. She picked them up this morning. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the house without them here - is that when they're gone, I'm much nicer to the cat.

It's almost school time again, and I'm kind of obsessed with the thought. This is a picture of Drew his first year of school. See how his hands are behind his back, and his lips puckered as if he's blowing bubbles? That's his Tiger tail and bubbles position they use to help the kids be orderly in the hallways.

My friend Lori drug me to a PTC meeting this week. I say "drug" because I know she reads this. I was actually thrilled that I went, and I plan to go the rest of the year as well. (PTC - Parent Teacher Club). I read a terrible story yesterday about one of the worst cases of neglect ever uncovered in this country. Millions of emotional, logical miles from any of our own lives. And yet, I can't help thinking about some of the tiny ways I neglect my kids sometimes. When I think about school this year, my obsession is in how little a parent actually has to do and still at the end of the year find that their child has learned. I graduated from an intimate, private school. My children go to public. And with both systems, I have seen that you can be barely present in your child's school world, and they still get educated. The school system I send my children to is especially diligent with reading. I can't believe the way my kids have taken off with it. And they're boys. I've always heard it's harder to get them to enjoy reading. But my middle son read two chapters of Joshua in the bible the other night without breaking a sweat. It's exciting to me. And as school starts this year, I keep thinking, I want to be more present this year. I don't want to get to the end of the year and realize they grew by leaps and bounds despite me. I think it started at the beginning of the summer actually. At the library the other day, my sons had videos picked out, and I told them they had to get two books each. A young friend asked my son why they had to do that, and (in front of his principal who happened to be standing there), John said, "Because my mom wants us to read this summer." That was awesome. It made me feel very present.  (And, yea, I totally owe him for making me look good).

So I keep thinking about these things. How I want a better system for the five thousand papers they each come home with every week. How I want to be at more of their parties, stay late on the morning they get to say the pledge in the intercom system - stuff like that. It's my current obsession.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go tuck in the cat.

what to do while I'm waiting

So, I told you I have the end-of-
a-book blues. I haven't been able to shake them yet and move on to the next one. I glanced at Sense and Sensibility in its display corner today, though, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Ah yes, I thought, the old favorites. That will get me through this.

"This" of course is not just the end-of-a-book blues but the pre-publication impatience. As I said in an earlier post, for all I know Jesus will return before my memoir is ever actually published. But knowing this and resolving to be patient have not actually made me so. I wish I could be in that Sesame Street documentary about how crayons are made. I loved watching that wax roll around in the big old vats and eventually get wrapped into paper and put into that wonderful smell-good box. I wish I could watch every step of my book that way. Starting now and without any other responsibilities until its finished.

Mom says the thing to do once one book is out of your hands is move on to the next. That's what she is doing while her first is being edited. I know she's right. But I haven't done it yet. I feel too uncertain of who I want to be as a writer. It's not like I've found my niche with memoir - there's only so many of those in one person.

I think there is only one thing I know for sure. I'd like to write books that give people the feeling I had when I glanced at Sense and Sensibility today. The feeling that they can trust me to make them feel better. That would be a lovely accomplishment.

The Queen of Jordan

I love this woman.  She's a queen.  A queen.  Can you imagine actually being one of those?  At her age?  I first heard of her of course not through my extensive  research on foreign affairs but because . . . she was on Oprah.  I usually declare my Oprah watching proudly, but I actually do feel a little ashamed of this one.  Anyway, as Oprah said during that interview, this woman is a quote a minute.  She's so thoughtful and well-spoken.  I just find her one of the most beautiful people in our world today, and I wanted to share her with you in case you neither keep up with foreign affairs OR watch Oprah.  (Really?  You don't watch Oprah?  But she's the Aha Lady!)

I saw this episode of Oprah once in 2006.  I had never heard of the Queen of Jordan before, and I did not remember any of the rest of the transcript - about the fact that her husband likes bar-b-que or that she monitors her son's television -watching even though he'll be king one day.  But I remembered this quote.

On Friday, my 6-year-old turns 7.  I remember when he was 4, and I was diagnosed with cancer.  I knew one thing for certain.  If I die, I thought, there is no way he will remember me.  I didn't blame him for it, but I knew it would be true.  And it broke my heart.  I felt so jealous of the rest of his world, the people who could stay in his life and whom he would  know and remember.  I bought his presents last night.  I stared at them in the cart and felt sad.  They cost enough, they came from my heart enough, but they looked so cheap compared to how I feel about him.  Those gifts will thrill him right to his toes, though.  And he'll have no idea when he opens the Play-Do that I am actually thinking of the Queen of Jordan and how she can afford to give her son-the-prince anything he wants, but she doesn't.  She's trying to teach him to be a citizen of the whole wide world.  They're intense - the desires we have for our children and the love we feel for them.  They're like a 50-dollar Golden Collection Volume I of the best Looney Toons episodes ever.  But translated to them, it's just a cool cartoon.

I dream big but I enjoy the Band-Aids

Funny true story about me - when I was in high school, my hope chest slammed shut on my head.  My head, and it busted my lip.  I've wondered if that would make a good book title - you know, for a teen angst kind of memoir.  My hope chest is this huge gorgeous handmade chest that Grandpa gave me when I turned 16.  Back then I mostly kept memories in it instead of hope.  Scrapbooks, old journals, stuff like that.  It's weird how long it took me to actually look ahead.  The sequel to that imaginary teen memoir, which will also be literal, is There's a Spiderman Band-Aid Stuck to My Hopechest.  It's about the days when I looked around at the little boys and the chaos, thinking, "Is this what I was hoping for all that time?"  

A friend once gave me a beautiful song by Carolyn Arends about how we're always reaching for the future and the past and, "No matter what we have, we reach for more/We are desperate to discover what is just beyond our grasp/Maybe that's what heaven is for."  I love the song.  It's so true.  

I've written here before about how much I love to look forward to things, to have a long term to-do list, a short term wish list.  I don't feel I'm really living unless I'm looking ahead at least a little.  And I think it's lovely to imagine that was put in us as part of our understanding that we're only passing through here.  But the other thing I get from the song is the reminder that the longing won't ever truly be reached.  The message of that to me is that all day, while thinking about my writing career and jobs and such, the thing that mattered most was still just the Spiderman Band-Aids.  The bare feet in my header and the boys that belong to them.  You know . . . the life I've found.

what i learned on vacation

Remember high school?  When your whole world basically existed within the walls of that building?  Foreign affairs were pretty much reduced to the bus trips to opposing schools during sporting events.  And being somebody was determined by how many semicolons you needed in the yearbook index.   I hated traveling back then.   I disliked the feeling of going outside of my universe.  And my universe stayed small for a long time after high school actually.  Maybe it does for lots of small town kids.   It wasn't until a few years into college that I started caring how many cool things existed outside of my universe and whether or not I would ever see any of them.  

Now I love to go places.  I love the feeling I get when I am in an unfamiliar town and there are people simply everywhere living their own small-universe lives.  It's so freeing to let my own problems melt into the bigness of humanity.  And so inspiring to see the endless possibilities of life - where to live, where to work, what to drive.  And so powerful to understand - I guess - how little I matter.  

I never feel more important than when I stand aware, smack dab in the middle of my insignificance.  I think that's the first step to being able to matter at all.

(P.S.  The cancer checkup went well too.  I'm still free of it!)

finders keepers

A real life moment in my day.  (That's why I have on no eyeliner - I almost always put on eyeliner for you people, but I was letting my lids rest as one of them was sore - and why Jake's hair is sticking up.  It looks quite handsome when it's combed).  If you go to Felicity's site you will see the receiving end of this picture as we were video chatting with Lic and Macy at the time.  Check out the overalls on that little chica.  Adorable.   I love Mac Books.

And guess what?  I think I do have a life motto.  I remembered it as so many of you were sharing yours on my last post.  (Just keep swimming, gotta love that.  I'm such a fan of the Dory-types).  
I read mine in a book by Martha Kilpatrick called All and Only, and it struck me as special immediately.  She was talking about not knowing where life is going to take you and how you're going to accomplish what you want, and then she said.  "Do the task at hand, Live the life you find."  I love that.

I sometimes wonder if I should regret this or that decision, if I've made the right choices, how things would be different if I had made different decisions.  Her phrase settled me so much.  We do make a lot of choices in life, but sometimes life just happens.  We make some choices because they are a by-product to some other bigger choice we were making.  And eventually I just needed to realize that truth, live the life you find.  It doesn't mean I don't believe in pursuing better jobs or big dreams or warmer geographical locations (good grief, Winter, are ya done yet?  Uncle, already!)  But I live this phrase in the sense that I don't want to always be looking elsewhere for my life when whatever it is, whatever I'm supposed to do - at least right now - is right in front of me.  

Anyway, I didn't like being motto-less.  I need to be ready for Oprah when she calls.  Of course, darn, it's not like I wrote that phrase myself . . . ah well.  Recognizing greatness is a certain kind of greatness in and of itself, right?

creedless

Personal mottos.  This idea fascinates me today.  I heard it first when Oprah asked Jim Carrey what was his.  He said, "I am heaven."  At first he didn't explain it, as if the meaning of that should be obvious.  But there were just way too many directions we could have gone with that, so he finally explained.  He said too many people wait around for heaven to happen someday and be somewhere else, but he reminds himself that it's right here and now.  That's a paraphrase, and I make no comment on his actual motto but merely the awe and amazement I felt that he was able to answer the question.  He first qualified the fact that he has many creeds by which he lives, but that is the one he shared with us, the adoring public.  Can I call us that?  I mean, he's pretty cool.  Anyway . . . 

I am notorious for watching moments like that in an interview and panicking.  What happens in my inevitable someday when I'm in an interview like that and someone asks me that question?! Or more likely, what if someone asks me in the grocery store?  I have no idea what my life creed is.  As the little girl says of the cost of a plane ticket in Sleepless in Seattle, "It changes practically every day."  

Which reminds me that I may not know what my life creed is, but Nora Ephron has probably written it down somewhere.  My MySpace motto is from her as well, "I lead a small life . . . .")

When I downloaded several songs from iTunes the other day, I could have come up with a life motto.  Probably "Give Me Jesus".   There's something about that song - you can have all this world, just give me Jesus.  That one almost always feels true.  But when "Boondocks" came on, I gotta say it felt sorta like my motto too.  I like that I am finally learning to be proud of where I came from.  Another country song I downloaded was "Better Life" by Keith Urban, known in my head as Someday, Baby.  It played quite a bit the year I had cancer, and it was nice to find lighter moments in which we could hope for a future happier than the trial we were in.  I'm a big someday girl.   But I never leave it at that.  I would have to add into my creed something about Living for Today because that's another important one I gleaned from the aforementioned Year with Health Crisis.   

So you see what I mean?  Oprah asks me that question someday and she's going to be staring at the business end of a panic attack.  There's no way I'm pulling it off like Jim did.  Except of course, that I'll be thinking about it from here on out.   Any of you willing to attach yourself to a life creed of some sort?  You can't take "I am heaven".  That's Jim's.   

a little thought on sameness

So this morning I was putting on my mascara and deliberately closed my mouth.  I do the same thing with blush, never smiling as I apply it.   And I'm a work-at-home mom who refuses to wear sweat pants or pajama bottoms EVER.

Why do I do these things?  In case it's not obvious, the technical reason I do them is to be different, to avoid embodying a cliche.  A friend gave me a cartoon once of geese flying in a V, and the last bird in one of the formations was saying, "Geez, I feel like such a conformist."  I don't think she gave it to me because I was so very unique but because she could see that I was trying to be.

What is amazing to me is the contradiction of it all.  First of all, in this day and age - seriously - trying to stick out in the crowd is exactly what the rest of the crowd is doing.  So I'm not sure it's possible to actually stick out in the crowd unless you genuinely do, and that's rarely by deliberate activity.

And more importantly, why do I try so hard to be unique when everything I do as a writer is try to describe, illustrate, and otherwise completely embrace the little things that make us all the same?

It's just something I was wondering.

Tag, You're It

Today's Tag from the Good Girls is - What do you like and dislike about yourself, so - after sorting through the numerous options . . .
Ahem:

This is Chicken Joe from Surf's Up. I adored this character. I loved how completey unfazed he was by absolutely everything. Native islanders throw him in a pot of boiling water, and he thinks he's being treated to a soak in a jakuzzi. They add vegetables. He thinks he's been handed some dinner. They do the chicken soup dance around him. He says, "Cool. Dinner and a show." The whole movie of Surf's Up is about how deeply the penguin cares about himself and his surfing dream and his ultimate life-affirming destiny. Chicken Joe is the lovely, humorous antithesis to such self-absorbed introspection. And it's not like he's actually indifferent to life. He really does love to surf. But when it comes time for the big competition, he's like, "Dude, I don't even know where my board is - I gotta go find it. "

So what I dislike most about myself is how little I resemble Chicken Joe. I'm way too introspective (i.e., self-absorbed) about life and my place in it. Almost nothing rolls off my back, and if you throw me in a pot of boiling water and add some vegetables, I will cry and fuss and scream and later ask everyone I know why this might have happened, what I could have done differently, and whether or not they think I would have at least tasted good.

What I like about myself is, I can learn. I think it's one of the best qualities of being a human at all. I dislike the emotions and self-absorption of how deeply I take things in. But I like that I do take them in and try to learn from them and hopefully sometimes do. If I hurt your feelings - even if you don't tell me so, I will probably realize it later and not do it (at least in that same way) ever again. If I speak too loudly or too quickly or too much, I usually recognize it and deal with myself.

So, as seems to be the theme for the day, my like and dislike are kind of different sides of the exact same thing. That's how strengths and weaknesses go, I've been told.

Oh and dude, spoiler ahead if you haven't seen it, but Chicken Joe totally wins the surfing competition. And I totally took that in.

More . . . on writing of course.

I finished A Wrinkle in Time. I loved the concept about fighting darkness and how artists are people who have done this over the years - well, them and Jesus. Now I'm reading this book, Gilead, because I've heard it recommended more than once, and well - it won the Pulitzer Prize. I don't think I really know what a Pulitzer Prize is because I was surprised to find myself reading a book that had actually won it.
In Gilead, the writer says that when you write, "You feel you are with someone." I never thought of it that way. I thought I wrote to feel alone. Or at least, to thoroughly explore ideas with only myself listening, because myself is so agreeable and encouraging toward my ideas. Even this blog, which has proven to have a reader here and there, (hi, Mom!), I usually begin it with one sentence in mind. I think to myself, "I love Thursdays." And then I think, If I keep writing about Thursdays will I eventually hit on the ultimate meaning of life and perhaps solve all the world's problems and my own mood all at once?
I was alone for a couple of hours yesterday. And I just love being alone sometimes. The quiet is so restorative. But in those moments I always wonder if I only enjoy being alone then, because I don't usually have to be. And then I worry about getting old and my children moving away and my outliving my husband, as wives tend to do, and I wonder if I will hate being alone in those days. How typical of me to add the bitter to the sweet.
Anyway, even though I thought I wrote to be alone, I think I was wrong. I write here because I'm trying to matter. I write in a journal for my children because I hope they care one day. I write books because I want someone to read them. And even my journal - I'm not just writing to my future self. I think deep down I hope one of my children's children's children - you know.
I haven't read very far into Gilead yet. But it's a lovely book. Just a bunch of wonderful thoughts written lyrically and woven into a story. And I've been thinking that if I could write just one book in a lifetime that was so worth reading, I'd feel proud. "You feel you are with someone." I think maybe that is true. At least, when I write, I think I'm hoping someone would want to join me there, eventually.

In which I review a movie from my cabinet at home

I've been thinking about the Truman Show today. I love that movie. I take it waaaay too seriously, which I have to assume was kind of the point. I mean, surely, you don't write lines like, "People accept the reality with which they are presented," unless you intend to be deep - don't you think? If you haven't seen it - briefly - Truman was adopted at birth and raised in a world created by a television studio. He thinks he's living his life, but everyone else around him is just acting, and his decisions are subtly made for him by the producers. The concept completely fascinates me and, frankly, I've been there. I've made decisions that were really kind-of sort-of made for me. I've lived life in a fog sometimes, refusing to see what was real and what was ridiculous.

The scene I keep thinking about today is the one where Truman is pouring his heart and fears out to his "best friend". And the whole time the best friend is placing, removing, and re-placing the same six candy bars into a vending machine because he doesn't actually do that for a living. I don't know why - it's just making me smile today. And I need the smile, because on the inside I'm actually Truman getting out of the boat and hitting the wall that's painted to look like the sky. It's awful when you realize life is happening to you instead of your actually living it. I've been here before. And I eventually get a breakthrough. Because it's almost all perspective. It's waking up and looking around from an objective point of view to see which things are real and which things are just for television. So to speak. I guess normal people would just say, "I'm reexamining my priorities." But where is the drama in that?