i don't love poetry, but...

俳

haiku: poetry
that my un poetic heart
can truly love

my birthday dinner

For my 35th birthday, I wanted to have a real-life, grown-up, outdoor dinner party. So I did. My best buddy from Oregon even flew in as a surprise!

So while my mom and I made the meal (Indian, my fave!) Best Bud took all my ideas and made them just right. (She always does, she's so talented.)

Partner these images with Billie Holiday, The Andrews Sisters and Frank Sinatra serenading over the spicy scents of the meal. Ah...so much fun.

balance-shmalance

I've been struggling lately with that enigmatic concept: balance. I hate it. It doesn't really make sense. How can I maintain this balance-thing when I don't even understand what the term means?

The visual I have is one of those old-fashioned scales where you have the things you need to accomplish portrayed as little weights. We carefully place them on the scales in such a way so they maintain an even keel. (Sorry, mixing my metaphors there.) So we can keep placing more or more on as long as we keep them 'in balance'? And when is it unbalanced? When the weights fall off? Or when it's just barely off horizontal? Does anyone really know?

What about the idea that we are one of those circus performers that balance all sorts of things upon our chins? (cue calliope music) They must be placed just so in order to keep them from tumbling down. We are also limited by the length of our arms as to how much we can place upon the pile. (Unless we have help, but I really don't want to go any deeper in this analogy, if that's okay with you.) It sure seems awful precarious, doesn't it? Is that really how I want to live?

In any description of balance, there is an accompanying element of instability. If I misstep, will it all come tumbling down? And won't my neck get sore keeping it in that position all...the...time?

I'm exhausted just reading about it. How can people really aim for this as their goal?

I've decided that being a world-class cagola player or a side-show extraordinaire is not what I want to strive towards. Especially since I'm not the best at choosing which things are most important to place on my balancing piles in the first place. So I've made this agreement with God: I give him the multitude of odd-shaped pieces that I'm failing to balance on my own. He then picks out which ones are just right for the day and as I go along, He's right there beside me, carrying them Himself, letting me know what's important. I go to bed at night with peace. And that's a big thing for me.

Now don't get the wrong idea. I suck at this, too. I often forget to ask for His help (or maybe I'm "too busy" to stop for a ridiculously short few minutes) and then I'll spend the afternoon engrossed in Pinterest (which I love, but isn't really the best use of my time usually), kicking myself when the kids are still working on their school while I'm finishing dinner at their bedtime of 8 o'clock. But luckily I've got a God who believes in second chances (or third...or fourth...or thirty-fifth...) And being a crappy God-relier (yeah, 'relier' is a real word, I looked it up) is 1000x better than balancing the world and her seven continents on my chin.

(Dang it! I just spent the last 20 minutes looking at Pinterest because I checked to make sure the link worked right. Grrrr...that site is a giant time-sucking lamprey eel...of awesomeness!)

techno love/hate.

I've finally gotten an iPhone.
The other afternoon I looked down and the battery was at 82%. My first thought?

"Awesome! I've been really productive today!"

How sad is that? A high battery shows that I haven't been messing with it much, thus I've been busy doing the things I need to get done.

My iPhone battery readout can now act as a productivity meter.

Almost directly.

Too much time on Words With Friends or perusing the Interwebs and not only does my battery life drop like a well-oiled cannonball, but so does my ability to check off those super important "To Do" boxes.

"Let's see...54% battery at lunch time? I've wasted half my day today! Whip crackin' time!"

OR

"2pm and my iPhone is at 91%!! (in the words of my consultant husband) I'm practically at Full Utilization!"

I'm not sure how I feel about this. We have a TV in our bedroom and upstairs in our Family Room (where I rarely go during the day) and no cable. This is on purpose. With no TV in our common areas, I accomplish much more. Now I've invited a pocket-sized So-Much-More-Than-A-TV into my life. One I can carry with me EVERYWHERE. It's up to sheer willpower now. There's no Removing The Temptor.


*gulp*

clever swim-related title

I just had an hour's worth of work vanish with the wrong combination of mouse clicks. *heavy sigh*

To sum up in ten sentences.:

1. Four of the kids are on a summer swim team.
2. I have to get up early.
3. I'm not an early riser, but have always wanted to be.
4. Swim team has given me the opportunity to change my sleeping habits.
5. "Early to rise" necessitates "early to bed."
6. "Early to bed" sucks.
7. Swim team = crazy busy.
8. Crazy busy = 2.5 hrs a day (Tues-Fri) and 7 hrs every Saturday for 8 weeks.
9. Crazy busy sucks.
10. The positives of swim team outweigh the sucky parts...just barely.

In retrospect, I think this sum up version is better.

the green-eyed monster

If I ever check out this one friend's wall on facebook I can't help but feel jealous and insecure. She's beautiful, successful, has way fewer kids than me (so her life is obviously easier than mine (that was sarcasm, if you didn't know)), is skinnier than me, has more money than me...I'm sure I can come up with more.

It's ridiculous, I know. It's juvenile, I know. It's like she makes me feel like I'm back in high school again with all those "Am I good/cool/skinny enough?" thoughts. I hate it. I have actually outgrown those insecurities. (Thank you, God!) But for some reason this one person drags it all back up again. The crazy part is that I'm completely aware of how skewed online personas can be, since most people only report the rosy everything's-going-good stuff. I know that everyone has crap they have to deal with and everyone has different strengths. We really can't compare ourselves since God made us all with unique purposes. That knowledge is all up in my head, but when she's on the screen, I can't feel it in my heart. So what to do?

Right now it's blaringly obvious to me that I need to get some Divine help. If anyone can get this ridiculousness sorted, it's Him.

And why did I even post this for the world to see? Ummm...the good answer is "If it just helps one person, it's worth it." Yeah, right. But the real answer is, "I just had to get off facebook because of her and I'm tired and should be in bed and felt like posting some honest/transparent stuff."

Nitey nite.

anonymity.

I flirt with the idea of doing a completely anonymous blog. (My friend said she was toying with the idea and that got me started thinking about it.) A blog that is linked to an unknown email and which has no outward connection to me at all. It would be a faceless voice in the blogo-void. I could say anything I wanted about anyone and no one would know.

In having a known blog I have to use restraint in posting. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I think twice before blabbing all about this funny thing to happened to the people near and dear to my heart. But an anonymous blog? No such restraint would be necessary. No one would know who was typing, nor would they know who it was about. Ah, the bliss.

But that got me thinking more. What good would this do me? And the more I thought, the more I realized that it would be more harmful than anything, at least for me. It might be freeing to type whatever I want, but self-control and restraint are two virtues that most people, especially me, need to exercise. And if I'm spilling my guts to the interwebs that can do nothing to help me, will I really want to repeat the whole thing to God who can actually do something about it? 

So my answer is no. No anonymous blogging for me. But it was a nice thought while it lasted.