My work is done...

Picture taken just after cleaning up where the dog threw up a chicken bone....

This is my dining room of course.

I post a lot of pictures on facebook.  I think of it as my replacement for the picture albums of yesteryear.  I could print them some day, I can look back at them at any time from anywhere.   But I take 100 photos, and I sort out all the frowns, shut eyes, blurred focus (lots of those in my haste), too dark, too bright, too shadowy.  And these days I have to usually make sure one of my offspring won't be upset if I post a pic. A highly complicated process, to make it through that filter for reasons you could never tell looking at the photos.  But they'll all laugh 'I can't believe you think that one is good??!' shaking their heads in despair at my gaucheness.  The few that make the cut, I fix the colors and crop them on my phone in about 17 seconds (I remember the old days, when it took me half an hour to do that.)

Facebook or similar photographs, which I enjoy, are not my real life. Not mine.  Not yours. Not that friend who was a cheerleader in high school who still looks good in yoga pants.  I've heard "I can't stand to be on facebook and see how great everyone else's life is compared to mine."  I don't suffer from this very common and understandable malady, because I know how the slices of life I (me. Toni) post on facebook are the grain of sand moments grasped among mostly long, boring, tough, argumentative, tiring, humdrum, routine, vanilla regular old sandbox-of-life.  I know that when others post pics, they aren't showing me (usually) the overflowing toilet, the lost cell phone, the toothepaste cap that rolls out of reach, the front door that won't stay shut when it drops below 40, the letter from the mammography center.  They aren't showing me the 47 unmatched socks in their laundry basket, or how they felt after a bad phone conversation with the bank, or a depressing visit to their parent's nursing home.  Do not judge me, or anyone else we meet on facebook or instagram or twitter by the short witty sayings and sunset-background couples shots that we all love to share.

Facebook photograph sharing is not real life.  That is why today, I shared the picture above.  It really was taken just after we cleaned up from the dog, Molly.  Molly got into the garbage when our back was turned (OK, my husband's back was turned, I wasn't home.) and rooted out some old fried chicken, bone and all. After she threw it up the first time, while we were running to grab something to clean it up with, she managed to eat that same deliciously-regurgitated chicken bone again.  The next time it came up we found it on the dining room rug.  Happened to be just before I took a bunch of shots of my crazy Thanksgiving dining room and kitchen.  Shots that were only for me, until now.

This is a dining room you ask?  Isn't everyone's dining room covered in miscellaneous flip house leftovers and the entire contents of their kitchen pantry?

Doesn't everyone's kitchen ceiling open up to the plumbing runs above it for repairs?

No?  No plastic sheets hanging everywhere to keep the drywall dust down?  

Am I getting new counter tops for Christmas?   No, but I did get a patched ceiling, for which I'm very grateful.  It was opened to fix the pipes that froze once upon a time and have kept our second bathroom out of commission for many long months, because, really, when is it a good time to cook under cover of 120 year old falling insulation?

But I digress.  My point is, that you (and I, definitely I) may not post pictures like this, and I am A-ok with that.  I like pictures of snow falling and babies crawling and sons playing amazing bass guitar.  The photos we all share online represent the brief breath of life we want to hold onto, remember, keep.  Sometimes we want to brag or make one of our children or our aunt or our dog groomer feel special.  Sometimes we just want to reach out and say 'hey, I'm here' or laugh along with Jimmy.  Nitty-gritty life is not frozen in time, but messy, grassy, muddy, windy, old, new, broken, stained, taupe, scotch-taped and hot-glued.  Don't compare your well-worn Target version of Keds to someone else's satin-pink-ribboned toe shoes.  They really aren't comparable.

New Year -- New me or Old me?

Years ago, my husband and I would spend hours on New Years day drafting detailed resolutions.  I had lists with five goals in each category: Financial, spiritual, home improvement, each child listed separately, and much more.  It was a very interesting exercise, and I do not think a waste of time.  But very rarely (never) did we end up feeling successful at meeting those goals.  No, the promises of a monthly Daddy date or yoga three times a week or saving for college years were forgotten with the very next garbage day/two with ear infections/overdue phone bill combo day.  So now I limit myself to two or three very do-able goals.  The phrase "Older but wiser." does have some truth to it.

"New Year, Old Me" made me laugh as I typed it as tomorrow is my birthday, and I'm supposed to feel older.  With a Jan 5 birthday it is literally an older me come each new year's week.  But I don't feel particularly older on my day of birth.  I also don't feel newer just because the calendar flipped to 2015.  Honestly, I feel about the same.  The new year brings a feeling of promise.  An old me is also reassuring.  

When I look back at 2014 I see a lot of struggle, some pain, losses that will stay with me for many years.  The joke my husband likes to tell (he doesn't know it is a joke) is 'Well last month was really unusual because of X, Y, and Z' but when I point out the last 300+ months have been similarly unusual, making them usual, he just disagrees.  This month things will be calm, normal, uneventful.  It never happens.  Oh some months are more hectic with more major events.  Graduations, operations, vacations. But even a regular old weekend with a dead battery, broken cake plate, lost wallet, frozen pipe, rude neighbor, dog doing her business in the wrong place, and a sore throat is trying. Time rushes on.  Time rushes on.  But in these same brief timespans are good things. Moments of peace.  Finding a new meditation site, savoring a delicious caramel, looking at the sparkle in my dog's eye as he offers me the tennis ball, laughing at an old episode of Seinfeld.  Every normal weekend has times of stress, arguing, fatigue, anxiety.  But interspersed are moments of pleasure, rest, laughter, and conversation.  This is life.   

~Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.~

In my twenties, this was a mantra that my bff Sherry and I lived by when we were feeling wise and trying to figure out life.  As new moms surrounded by Good Housekeeping's pages of perfection as well as diaper pails and check books that didn't match up, we discovered this phrase together and took it seriously. We agreed, if we could keep this on our fridge with a magnet and look at it every day, and somehow live it, we would be happy.

Well 27 years later I can say that I feel I am currently living it.  Oh sure, if I won the lottery I'd have the amazing laundry room and reading nook that I've pinned to my Pinterest boards.  I'd also help families adopt orphans, travel to Ireland, and pay off all my kids' student loans.  (Actually I could write several blog posts on what I would do if I won the lottery, but I digress.)  As I muse over 2014, here at the beginning of 2015, I say this -- I do want what I have.  And that when stress returns (probably within the next 18 minutes) it will do its damage, but that even the smallest crumbs of good outweigh the pounds of bad.  Good wins.

Blessings,
Toni

2015 Resolutions:

1. Hike once a month

2. Second draft of novel by July 31st.

Glorious Blue

Staples has forever earned me as a loyal customer, since that first commercial with the father dancing down the school supplies aisle to the theme music, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” I said, now there is a marketing rep who knows their customer base.

When my four children return to school, it is quite a momentous occasion for me. Anticipating it lifts my mood further with each passing week of August. Like most things in life, the anticipation can be better than the reality. I felt slightly blue yesterday morning when I realized dd#3’s toothless grin would not be popping into my peripheral vision at any point for the next six hours.

After 16.5 years of full-time motherhood, last August I felt the peace and pleasure of time to myself, when my last child entered the school doors for a full-day of book learning. I was giddy with excitement, didn’t know what or where to celebrate first. It was the color of blue so pale it looks white until you hold it up to the true white. Just a hint of blue, as I realized I’d never return to the preschooler days. Mostly, it was glorious.

This year, after a full-year of sanity-saving solitude, mental health-inducing quietude, and mind-centering hours of privacy each week, I feel slightly more blue.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still feeling the glories. The glories of a cup of tea with only the dog to watch me sip and nibble and contemplate. The glories of straightening a room and it staying that way for SIX full hours, an unbelievable feat of domesticity during prior years. The glories of writing for days at a time, taking up my dream I’ve had on hold for so many years of writing a novel, learning and growing in this occupation I’m trying to adopt. Many more glories than not.

But this August I feel a slightly darker blue. Maybe the blue of a pale sheer curtain, blowing against a sunny window. An almost imperceptible increase in the saturation level of the blue. Because the more time you spend away from your children, the better you can appreciate them. I feel like repeating that one. I look at my daughter and think wouldn’t it be great if she was my only child. If I could have all four children, but raise them each one at a time. Because individually they are gifted, loving, creative, funny, wise and my baby.

So this time, the celebration was a little shorter, and I had a visioin of future Augusts, as each year, my glorious feelings ever-so-slightly dim, and my blue feelings gradually deepen to sky, then royal, then somewhere down the line, a cobalt blue. Having time alone maybe won’t be the glorious high it is today.

But for today, I’m still celebrating. And I’m writing again. My office is cleaned up, my desk reorganized, my files all filed. I am ready to start on another nine-month odyssey as I delve further into my second novel. Nine months that is, until summer, and the four children, return to the center of my universe.