Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport

When my brother and I were little, I'd guess around six and eight years old, he had a bunk bed in his room. His room also had two large windows that looked out across our driveway with an excellent view of our next door neighbor's back yard. Every so often we'd convince mom to let me camp out in his room. Then we'd sneak in some papers and pencils, and each lay on our respective bunks next to the window and watch across the driveway to the yard. The yard consisted of gravel and a generic assortment of grasses and weeds and wasn't very interesting in and of itself. The neighbors, however, were interesting - at least to a couple little kids who can't imagine being outside past ten o'clock at night. There were always people stopping by just for a few minutes, then leaving quickly. Occasionally someone would go in, never to be seen again (or not to leave until after we'd fallen asleep on our pages).   The mysterious guests would always pull right up to the back step, and we'd write down their licence plate numbers and the time and other details, like "wearing plaid shirt" and so forth. Once, they even moved a ratty old sofa onto a decrepit trailer. Imagine our disappointment that there were no license plates to be seen - they backed the trailer in at an angle. The thing is, I don't remember what started all this, and what we did with the note pages. I'm just glad I didn't wake up with a pencil in my nose, falling asleep writing like that. Decades later, I still remember wondering WHAT was the point of moving the couch so late at night? For all our sleuthing, we never discovered the Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport.

Telling Myself: to live HERE

Do you ever get so busy, you forget you had a goal for the day? Maybe in all the craziness of real life, the To Do list was updated to the To Do Tomorrow list. I've been feeling like that for a while. Come to think of it, probably since I was sixteen years old, which feels like both forever ago, and only a few days past.

On those nights when I didn't collapse into bed and immediately pass out in exhaustion, I'd lay there trying to slow my brain down by making a mental list of the things I'd do tomorrow, then wistfully imagine my magical home once I got things organized. My children would be well behaved, the dryer would never gobble another sock, I'd cook fabulous meals from scratch out of thin air, things would be simple, relaxing, and beautiful.

When I was in college, I thought it'd be so much simpler when I had a career. When I was working, I thought it'd be so much simpler if I could stay home with the kiddos. Here's the shocker: now that I'm home with the kiddos, life is as complicated as ever. Maybe even more so, as I'm responsible for more than just my own self.

The commonality to all this, besides the busy craziness and wishing for a calm existence? In this case, it would be me. My commitments made, to do lists of both the necessary and completely unrealistic, the mental picture of an ideal home and family life . . . in all these "should do" and "could be" things I've collected, what did I do with myself? What did I do with that handsome, wonderful man I married and sweet, angelic little babies? Well, they'v stuck with me, though all my craziness. Lately I've been reminded (or been noticing all the blatantly obvious hints!) that one can do wonders with what one has on hand. That life slips by far to quickly, and I've slipped back into the mindset of spending every day wishing it was Friday instead - wishing my life away.

So I'm giving up all those aspirations. I'm going to sit on my duff!   Wait! That's not where I'm going with this rambling :)

I'm re-evaluating all these illusions I've adopted of what an ideal life, home and family would look like. I want to scrub away the nonsense and get down to what is true, right, and good. I'm reminding myself of the things that I need to be and trying not to include one of the stereo types tagging along. Right, I'm human, and I'm sure at times this will be an abysmal failure. Will I be a better me? Wife, Mom, Friend? I hope so.

One day I'm going to reread this post with aged wisdom and realize what a goof I am/was. That's okay, I'm going to do the best I can with what I have now. :)

"i love to learn" or "i'm still bitter about that D I got eight years ago"

Btw, I love to take classes at our local community college and have been blessed to get to take them because my mom foots the bill (thanks again, Mom!) 

I signed up for Econ 201 - Macroeconomics this semester. I was nervous. Maybe I'd gone too far this time I thought to myself while looking over the text for the class. WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD I HAVE THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!?!

I've been told I have a rather "different approach to education" by one of my professors who was a mentor during my English pursuits years ago, and I decided to take it as a compliment. My college career has been what I like to call eclectic. Classes I picked because they sounded fun to take, that may or may not have applied to any degree I was perusing, include Finger Spelling, News Writing, Survey of World Mythology, Introduction to Allied Health...

I've enjoyed nearly every one of my classes, with a few exceptions like an Intermediate Aerobics class (back when I was so sleep deprived I thought that yes, I could get up at 5AM after waitressing until 2AM and still be coordinated enough not to knock someone else out in class two days a week). A rather fortuitous bout of bronchitis got me out of that class without too much guilt!

Another class that still really gets me riled up is the only class ever that I received a D in (I'm considering taking a break to throw up and come back, since I'm admitting a D out here... on the INTERNET, but I'm going to post it AND I'm not going to loose my lunch over it, AND it won't result in a 'ghost post'!) Any way, the class was "Computer Operating Systems" which I took the Spring semester just after the big Windows XP release. Given the course title and description in the college catalog, I was under the impression that we'd be learning the highlights and inner workings of some of the major operating systems (OS). Boy, was I ever wrong! It turned out the course was two lectures on the fact that there were OS (primarily focusing on DOS/Windows . . . someone else bringing up the idea of Unix was quickly stopped - that's not what this class is about.) Then we were on to the real agenda of the class: an in depth look into what I now know would be my personal pit of despair, WINDOWS 2000. 

I'm going to give you a brief list of my excuses of why I didn't do well in that particular class:

• the course title and description were a complete LIE! 
• Windows 2000 was an outdated OS at that point, and though I can see why it was handy for a college or businesses to use for their huge networks for a long time after that . . . that's NOT what the course description said the class was about!
• average amount of sleep I was getting per night was 3 hours. Often just stayed up since it wasn't worth risking sleeping through work over 3 hours of sleep. . .  
• the floppy disk that I turned in the final project on died (as they notoriously do) so all my teacher got was an error when he tried to access the project and he couldn't accept a late redo of the final at that point
• the love of my life then lived just under 2,000 miles away and so I chose to distract myself with too many commitments. (next time I'll just sleep more, really.)

Realistically, going to college full time along with working 70 - 80 hours a week was one of the more ridiculous things I've done. That's right, along with racking up a bunch of credit card debt at the same time, it's on my top three "young and dumb" things to do. I ended up blaming everything on that ridiculous class, which in my self-caused sleep deprived state, was perfectly logical, and rather than try to make some effort or change classes, I stayed, out of "principle" and got a D.


The dread I feel when someone mentions Windows 2000, or when I have horrifying flash backs to that class, is what struck fear in my heart (or maybe just my stomach) after I started looking over the daunting text I have for Macroeconomics. Vowing not to have a repeat of the notorious OS class, and logistically unable to switch classes, I went to the first class last Monday night. Guess what. This class is going to be cake. It comes down to four tests, none using unreliable floppy diskettes. It helps too, that I now an only slightly sleep deprived full time mom.

Here's my point, which I don't think I really made yet: learning, even when the task itself was an abysmal failure, can be worth it. And while I'm not trying to attribute my D to my mom, or the fact that I was home schooled, I do mean to say, thank you Mom and Dad. I still love to learn, enjoy an academic challenge,  and can't imagine life without all the books and sometimes, learning the hard way.

reason to love the internet: Orcharding

I've heard a lot of jokes about the internet and blogs/bloggers. I think that perhaps if you dive into the "sewer of information" and start swallowing everything that comes to you, a) GROSS, and b) are you some mindless zombie?! As with any of the media we are bombarded with everyday, it takes discernment, a touch of common sense, and a sense of humor. While we wade through all this muck and brouhaha, we can discover little bright spots of happiness and art. 

http://wakeworkrinserepeat.blogspot.com/ 

Last year I found this blog (yes I use the Blogger "next blog" button and get so annoyed when it's not on someone's page). The blog site/title is GENIUS. PURE GENIUS. It's one of those things when you see it you say, "If only I had thought of that first!" Also, I love her sense of humor. And the reason I'm posting this today: the pictures are wonderful! I love seeing other people's view of their every day world. I'm a shaky photographer at best, and have no Photoshop skills. That makes me appreciate someone else's frozen time and beauty so much more. This wonderful "Orcharding" picture made my day. I'm posting it here after seeing that Bethany just asks to be sited when you borrow her work. So, dear friends, admire this picture and stop by and visit Bethany's blog.