It’s been so long since I wrote something here, I forgot my URL and my log in. Seriously. That’s sad. I’ve thought about posting things. Though about what I would write. What I could write. What I needed to write. But I just haven’t gotten around to it until now.  I’ve been living in a crazy, crazy world lately. Life with two kids, a traveling husband and a small business of our own is always crazy but lately it’s been the icing on the cake of crazy around here.

I’m not sure exactly where to start. Perhaps September 21st would be a good place to start. At around 6 pm. Standing at the soccer field. And then the phone rang. It was my friend’s husband. My friend (we’ll call her S) who I grew up with, lost touch with for 20 years and reconnected with 2 1/2 years ago. My friend whose middle child is in school with KPC. My friend who works out with me at the gym each week. My dear friend. I didn’t answer it because SDC’s soccer practice was just starting but when I saw he left a message, I felt compelled to listen and I knew I had to return the call. I’ve never gotten a call that took the wind out of my gut. That felt like a punch so hard i couldn’t stand. Literally. Could not stand. Could not breathe. Could not see. Could not think. I could only say “No. No. No. No.” My friend’s mom…my second mother in elementary school…had been killed instantly in a car wreck in our hometown. My friend, who lost her father three years ago to cancer, had just had her mother taken from her. Tragically. Awfully. Horribly. Unbelievably.

These are the things that happen to other people. The stories you read about in the paper and think “Gosh, how awful for that family”. You think “I can’t imagine.” And then it happens to someone you know. And it’s worse than you can ever imagine.

My mom and I went to the funeral. We went for our friend. We went for our community. We went because we didn’t believe it. We couldn’t believe it. We wouldn’t believe it. I still don’t believe it. 

I can’t believe the courage, grace and strength that S displayed when she stood up and spoke of her mother. But i’m haunted by her words. I’m haunted by what she said: “I know God has a plan. But i don’t understand why part of his plan was to take my father and my mother from me while i was so young.”

Tell me…what kind of god does that to someone? What kind of god robs a daughter of her parents at the age of 35? What kind of kind, loving and good god causes such tremendous pain and heartache that it is all one can do to get out of bed and put two feet on the floor some days?

They say God doesn’t give someone more than she can handle. Really? I’m not buying that. She’s got more than enough.

They say that when someone dies that they are in a better place. Really? Because i think S’s mom was in a pretty damn good place right here on this earth with her family and her friends.

There are so many ways that religion attempts to heal the hurt of a loss of a loved one and its all falling short to me right now. I’m searching for some kind of peace in all of this and i’ve yet to find it.

I’m a logical, rational person and when I can’t make sense of something, it drives me crazy. I can’t make sense of why this happened.

I like to solve the puzzle. To find the answer. And i can’t find the answer to this.

I’m coming up empty handed and it hurts.

2010 was a pretty awesome year. It was awesome in the best and worst of ways.

In the best of ways, my son started kindergarten and loved it. My daughter turned one and finally learned to walk one day before her 18 month birthday. Our small company had a very successful year in a generally slow economy. I made some new friends and strengthened some existing friendships. It was a good year but not without it’s stressors.

SDC spent a few days in the hospital during the summer and was subsequently diagnosed with asthma and several allergies. He’s now on daily meds, had tubes put in his ears at the end of December and had his adenoids out. We aren’t convinced his asthma is under control yet so it’s a constant vigilance of listening to his cough, paying attention to his breathing and staying on top of his meds.

KPC didn’t want to be left out so she, too, spent a few days in the hospital this fall. A stubborn case of the croup combined with an ultra-conservative doctor led to two nights in our children’s hospital.

There was much family drama that I don’t have enough courage to blog about right now.

But generally speaking, 2010 was good. And my hopes are high for 2011.

I’ve never been much of a resolution maker. It’s just not my thing. But I do believe in using the new year as an opportunity to reflect on life and look toward the coming year. So with that in mind, here are some things I want to do this year.

I want to read more. Books. Novels. Anything other than social media updates, blog posts and magazine articles. I used to be a voracious reader. My parents couldn’t tear me away from my books. These days my attention span is embarrassingly low. I need to exercise my brain more. I need to start reading again.

I want to keep running. I’m training for my first half marathon right now and after that there is a 15k in March that I will run. But after that race I have a habit of letting my running schedule slide. I need to not do that. Running is good for my body. It’s good for my mental health. It’s good for my family because I’m not so wound up and tense. I need to keep running.

I want to keep cultivating my friendships. I have more friends now than I have had in my whole life. It is amazing. I can hardly believe it. Friendships take work though and I need to take time to work on them. To reach out with a phone call, an email, a lunch date, whatever. I need to protect these relationships because they are important to me. It’s too easy to get busy with family, work, errands, the mundane busy work of life. I need to not do that.

And finally, I want to start working on my scrapbooks again. I did a scrapbook for my wedding (ten years ago this May!). I started a scrapbook for SDC after he was born but in that book I haven’t even gotten him home from the hospital yet. Given that fact it, it probably goes without saying that I haven’t started a scrapbook for KPC. We are remodeling our office and my old desk is going into our storage room. My plan is to get that room organized and set it up for my scrapbooking. If I have a place I can work on the albums that I don’t have to pack up each time I have to stop then maybe I can make some progress. I might be able to get SDC to his first birthday and possibly get KPC born!

Here’s to a successful and healthy 2011!

I’d really like to cancel Christmas this year. I’m not going to go all bah humbug miserable, I just don’t have the time, energy or enthusiasm for the holiday. If it weren’t for my children I would probably just ignore it.

It’s been a heck of a year, especially the last 6 months. Seems like it’s been one hit after another. Christmas feels like one more hit. A house to decorate, a tree to dress, an elf to remember to move each night, Christmas cards to order, address and mail, gifts to select, buy and wrap, candies to make. The list goes on and on. Christmas just feels like a big chore list this year.

I wish it didn’t. I have a 5 year old boy who could not be more excited about Christmas. KPC is enchanted by the lights. AC loves this time of year. I just see it as a burden. And it makes me grumpy.

Tonight we got out the boxes of decorations and SDC started going through them. ‘I remember this one’ he’d say as he pulled out an ornament. ‘Mommy where did I make this one?’ he’d ask as he found one of his homemade ornaments from preschool. KPC was so captivated by the addition of the ornaments to the tree we could barely pull her away. Watching them reminded me vividly that my children are the reason I will do Christmas every year. Because the pure magic of Christmas only lasts for a finite number of years before the magic is tarnished. First by the recognition that Santa is just a figment of our imagination and then by the overwhelming work it takes to create said magic.

I can’t say I’m embracing Christmas now. I’m most certainly not. But I will try to be a little less grumpy. I’m going to try to focus on the little things that make me happy, like the look on KPC’s face when she marvels at the tree, or the excitement in SDC’s voice when he runs upstairs to get yet another piece of paper for his growing list for Santa. I’m going to try to remember those things when I get stressed about what to buy my in-laws who have everything, need nothing and are next to impossible to please. I’m going to try to remember those things when I go to run errands and the traffic sucks. I’m going to try to remember those things when the stress of the holiday starts to wear off my ability to enjoy my children’s innocent joy.

And, I’m going to try to remember that above all Christmas should be more about family, love and giving than gifts, decorations and food.

Remember what I said about life being ‘uncomplainable’? Well, apparently that pissed off somebody in the universe because the last week has really been testing the limits of both of my patience and my anxiety medication.

It all started when KPC had to go in the hospital because of croup the weekend of Halloween.

The day after she went home AC went on a scheduled two week business trip and came down with laryngitis. A little medical lesson for you: laryngitis & croup? Same virus. I got a cold but nothing like the misery that AC had. He holed himself up in a hotel room in Houston and managed to get well enough to teach for the second week.

AC came home late on Friday night which is normally a relief for me because I get some help but not so much this time. He threw his back out on Monday. The worst he’s ever done it. Like he’s so out of alignment it makes me nauseous. So basically he is in excruciating pain and is unable to help with things around the house or with the kids. A bummer because I was just a single parent for two weeks and usually he is very helpful, but right now? I’m pretty much still a single parent.

Next? A little family drama that I’m not at liberty to discuss even though this is a bitty blog that exists only for me. One day his family might stumble upon this and that wouldn’t be a good thing so until I figure out a creative way to discuss the family issues (and believe me there are many) in an obscure manner you’ll just have to trust me that recently the issues have been distracting and exhausting.

Starting about a week ago SDC’s cough came back. Again. For what feels like the fiftieth time since this summer. For some reason this time it has persisted with a vengeance despite following the pulmonologist’s step up plan of doubling his Asmanex and adding in daily Dimatapp. Yesterday he started complaining at his back and neck hurt. The same complaint he had this summer when he ended up in the hospital for a pneumomediastinum. Commence Mommy freak-out!

SDC is scheduled to have tubes put in his ears next Wednesday to resolve the fluid and pressure that has been hanging out since his hospitalization this summer. At his pre-op physical today we found out that he is not just coughing, he’s wheezing. If he’s still wheezing next Wednesday then he can’t get the tubes put in. If it doesn’t happen next Wednesday then it probably won’t happen this year which really sucks because we have already met his deductible for this year so the surgery was going to be pretty cheap, relatively speaking.

Just for fun, yesterday KPC busted her lip on her activity table. Thankfully not bad enough to need medical attention, God knows we’ve had more than our fair share of that lately, but enough to bleed on my shoulder without me realizing it. As if the busted lip wasn’t enough excitement for the afternoon, she choked on a piece of bread at dinner and proceeded to throw up all over the floor and me. The puke on my pajama pants went perfectly with the blood on the shoulder of my t-shirt (you don’t think I actually dress nice for this glamourous life, do you?)

So seriously universe. Enough with the little things piling one on top of another. Any one of these occurrences on it’s own is a non-event, a completely manageable part of life, but when piled one on top of another on top of another? Well…thank God for Lexapro.

It’s frustrating, after all these months of wanting to start a blog, that now I find I have no time to post. I have to work so hard on my posts, to get them just right, before I am brave enough to hit the publish button. It’s time consuming.  These days I feel like I’m lucky if I have more than 5 minutes to do any one thing. I decided tonight to take a stab at just getting something written, even if it is not anything that I really want to write about. At least it’s something, and it’s all my brain can handle right now.

I have numerous posts swirling around in my head.

I want to write something about my recent (can you still count September as recent?) trip to Amsterdam with AC and the anecdotal things I learned.

I want to write about my experience with friendships and how amazingly fortunate I have been over the last 12 months to have made some awesome new friends.

I want to write about the different roles that each friend plays in my life, inspired partially by my own brain but further ignited by Jenny’s beautifully written post. [She's one of those bloggers whose writing is so amazing it intimidates me.]

I want to write about my relationship with my sister. For a while I thought our relationship was broken beyond repair but it wasn’t and for that I’m grateful.

I want to write about what it’s like to be a work-at home-mother with two kids and a husband that travels 50% of the time.

I want to write about my amazing children because I have done an awful job at documenting their childhood in their baby books so I better document it somewhere!

I want to write about these things and so much more but at the end of the day, after I tuck SDC into bed, the last thing I want to do is sit in front of the computer and use my brain. I just want to sit. I want to sit and veg out in front of the TV (or just in the peace and quiet of my house) because finally I’m not preparing a meal, cleaning the kitchen, changing a diaper, chasing a 17 month old around the house, coaxing a 17 month old to walk, doing laundry, folding laundry, walking to the bus stop, walking home from the bus stop, doing kindergarten afternoon activities (calling it homework would be a bit of an exageration), making the kindergartener a snack, paying the bills, scheduling, rescheduling and attending doctors appointments, supervising play time in the cul de sac, running to Publix, checking e-mail, returning the calls I missed earlier because I was busy doing any one of the above, and let’s not forget trying to squeeze my almost full time job in to not even part-time hours. The list goes on and on.

But I’m not complaining. My to do list is long and it’s overwhelming most days, but it’s good stuff. I told a friend earlier today that it’s not “complainable” stuff (I don’t know if that’s really a word but this is my blog so I declare it to be so). It’s tedious, yes. It’s never-ending, yes. Some days feel unmanageable. But I’m lucky. My family is lucky. We have food in our pantry. We have clothes on our back and a roof over our head. We have children whose recent health issues have been relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. We have a marriage that can withstand sucky travel schedules. We have money in the bank, we have a small business that is strong. We are good. Life is good. It is not complainable.

So, I finally have a blog. And soon I’ll bust out all those posts that I referenced earlier because they are swirling around in my brain and until I get them out of my brain they are going to muddle my already clouded mind. But right now I’m on day eight of an eleven day trip for AC. So my kids are in bed, my kitchen is clean and there is no laundry to fold so I’m going to sit and do nothing. And love every blessed minute of it.

I grew up in the western part of North Carolina. The mountains. I am a mountain girl at heart, but that is a subject for another day. I lived in only two different homes growing up (okay, three but the first one was my first year of life and I don’t have memories from that far back so I’m choosing not to count that one). One house was my home from the age of 1 to 6. I have only a few distinct memories from that house. My best friend Sara Landry, the swingset in the back yard, the basement play room with the closet under the stairs and the porch swing that was mounted between two trees in the front yard. I have a picture from my fifth birthday party of me in my favorite terry cloth sailor dress with all of my friends piled on that swing. I loved playing on that swing. I need to dig up some pictures of me in that dress on that swing.

We moved to our next home when I was 6. My parents had 3 children (I’m the baby, BTW) and money was tight. For reasons I’m not sure I ever asked for, we didn’t (couldn’t?) take the porch swing with us. We moved to a house out even further in the middle of nowhere in the mountains. The front yard was steep and not a yard to play in. The back yard was long and narrow and not a place for swinging. We had a perfect covered porch with rocking chairs, but no porch swing. Until my 7th birthday when my dad and I collected all the junk we could find in the house, piled it all in our VW van (yeah, we rocked that VW van and at one point a VW beetle too!), packed a Hello Kitty thermos of juice and headed to the Saturday flea market hoping to sell enough stuff to buy a porch swing. Somehow we sold enough (or dad had saved enough to supplement the money we made at the flea market) that we were able to go pick out a swing for our porch. A redwood swing that hung on our porch for years until Dad sold the house about 7 years ago. I’m pretty sure he took that swing with him and hung it under his porch at his new house.

I love that swing. I love the story of getting the swing. It is one of the most vivid memories of doing something with me dad. We had many “only child days” but that one stands out as one of the best. I can still remember the heat and the dirty flea market. Selling our National Geographic magazines and god knows what else just to buy a silly swing.

When I started thinking about an image for my blog I was really struggling with something that represented both me and my desire to use my blog as a place to roll out the thoughts in my head to help myself relax. A place to babble about the crazies in my head to bring me back to my happy place. I was on a run with my sister at the beach and we were tossing around ideas for an icon and she threw out the idea of the porch swing and I knew immediately that it was perfect, for so many reasons. She and I had both taken turns that week napping on the porch swing at the beach house our family had rented. We all had taken turns relaxing on that swing that week either with kids running around or without. And we began talking about how it is virtually impossible to sit on a porch swing and NOT be relaxed. Its hard to rock back and forth in a rhythmic motion and be stressed or angry. You can’t really rock fast on a porch swing. It’s not designed for that. Thoughtful? Yes. Reflective? Yes. But tense? Difficult. Angry? Probably not for long.

As I continued to think about the porch swing I realized that it has been an icon in my life forever – from the first swing I had when I was 5 years old, to the swing that we bought when I was 7, to the watercolor my dad painted for me of the house I grew up in. The title of the painting is “Pete and Mimi’s Swing.” Mimi was my nickname growing up. Pete was my dog growing up. And the swing? It was always MY swing, not my family’s swing.

Now that I’ve grown up and have a home and a family of my own I realize there’s only one thing missing. In addition to my new virtual porch swing on my blog, I need a real porch swing. I need a place to sit and rock and relax for real, not just in my head. A swing for me, a swing for me to share with my husband and my children. A porch swing where I can sit and relax and enjoy my happy place.

I have been contemplating starting a blog for just over a year now. Thinking about it, wondering what I would call it, pondering what I would write about, jotting down ideas for posts. I finally got my act together and came up with a name, purchased the domain and started to get things set up with the help of the awesome Colleen. And now that I officially have a place on the internet to call my own, I can’t write. I can’t put anything together in any sort of logical coherent post. I have started and deleted so many posts its not even funny. I’ll start crafting one in my head and then when I finally have time to sit down and type it won’t come out. The other day I had a moment of clarity about a post I had been working on so I grabbed my phone and wrote an email that I sent to myself. When I sat down a few hours later to read it I realized it was rambling crap. Again. Ugh. Why did I think this blog was a good idea?

I read alot of other people’s blogs, mostly women. Women who are far better writers than I could ever even dream of being. Their posts are beautiful. Eloquent. Profound. Clear. Amazing. I can’t even fathom having that kind of ability to write what I’m thinking in such a perfect way. My posts come out rambling in circular thought patterns. Saying the same thing five different ways. I guess that probably shouldn’t be a surprise because if you looked in my brain that’s how my brain functions most of the time. All. Over. The. Board. Very rarely staying on one path to the nice tidy ending. Truth be told, part of why I started this blog was to help myself work through stuff. Thinking if I started writing that I’d be able to work through things like parenting challenges, WAHM issues, drama with the in-laws, self-esteem battles, work-life balance, etc. But to work through those things, I have to write about them. Not just write about them, but publish the posts too. Put them out there to get some air. Writing isn’t really my issue, it’s hitting that damn “publish” button.

I realize that there are only two people reading this blog right now, so really…what is there to be worried about. I should just suck it up and write. One day I’m going to be brave enough to say SCREW IT. Afterall, practice makes perfect, right? So maybe if I start writing about anything and everything I’ll find my voice. I’ll become a better writer. I’ll find some clarity in my thinking. I’ll find my comfort level and maybe some confidence. But in the meantime, I’m going to write more drafts and hit the delete button far more times than I hit the publish button. But every time I hit the publish button it will be a little bit of progress. A little bit more confidence and a little less intimidation.

Today is a good day. Today I feel like I could conquer the world. It’s the little things that make me feel like that. But lately? The little things have been falling apart instead of falling together so I have been overdue for a day like today.  It’s 10:30 a.m. and I got my 5 year old off to his first official full day of kindergarten on the bus with no meltdowns over breakfast, teethbrushing, clothes or the bus. I put dinner in the crock pot because I (finally!) remembered to take the chicken out of the freezer last night. I already did my sit ups and 35 minutes on the elliptical. And I still have 30 minutes to squeeze in some work before KPC wakes up from her morning nap. Today? It’s a good day.

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I’ve been rolling blog posts around in my head for months now. Thinking ‘oh, I could write about THAT’ or ‘Ugh…I need to write about that.’ I’ve started a list of topics I want to write about. And then when I finally got my act together (with the help of my awesome friend Colleen) I began thinking ‘oh…I need to write.’ and then ‘oh my god what am I going to write.’ So on the wave of this happy day I’m having I thought I’d just sit and ramble for a minute. Only through writing posts am I going to get comfortable with the process so I thought I best start somewhere. I’d rather start on a day that I’m feeling pretty good than a day when I’m feeling crappy (like last week when every day felt like one big catastrophic meltdown in my brain and the week felt ten weeks too long).

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I should warn you that I hate grammar rules. I never learned them the first time around and have been known to write and re-write and re-re-write sentences to avoid having to decide whether to use “me” or “I” or whether there should be a comma or no comma. (I love the comma. I over, use, the, comma. Deal with it.) I’m actually looking forward to SDC getting into English classes where I can learn the rules I memorized for tests but never took to heart the first time around. I think that part of my fear of putting my thoughts out on the interwebz for all the world to not see is that someone might find my blog, read it, and all they will think is that I’m uneducated and not worthy of being paid any attention. *sigh* i’m just going to have to get over that. Or you will.