perfect peace

There's this place :: This place right between being awake and being asleep :: Almost every night :: After everyone else is sleeping :: It's quiet. Really quiet (thank fucking god), and I have big decisions to make. Should I take a bath? read? watch something mindless on TV?

My God, the leisure of it. That's the thing – it’s downright leisurely. I don't worry about my list of things to do, all the missed expectations, the loss, the laundry. Most nights it's all of 30 minutes. But it's mine and it’s silent and I need it and look forward to it when things are noisy and out of control. This time: I really do appreciate it and it makes me better able to cope with life.

This life.
My life.

blech!

ONE of the things I find amazing about parenting my two small humans is the incredibly strange phenonmon of trying to convince them of the value and perfectness of things that are good for them that I myself would never contemplate doing. Let's start with the food. Things like peas, yams, yogurt, whole milk, oatmeal and carrots. Whenever any of these things are ingested by the smallies, even in the teensiest of amounts, I feel a wonderful sense of satisfaction. That I am indeed equipped to keep these fellas alive, and in the best case scenario healthy, happy and well-adjusted. This sense of satisfaction is tinged with a slight feeling of hypocrisy however, as I myself feel the following to be true: Peas are disgusting and should make any sane person gag. Yams are all wrong, the consistency, the density - just plain wrong. Yogurt smells like bad breath. Whole milk is altogether too thick and white. Oatmeal looks like wet cement (or worse) and carrots are okay as long as they are raw, cold and dipped in something...like peanut butter. And that's just the food.

As someone who strives for a healthy amount of self-awareness in life, how can I smugly justify making them go to bed early on a Sunday night so they'll be ready to start their week fresh and rested, when I stay up until midnight watching reruns of Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs? How do I feel so emphatically that TV before naptime is bad for their brains and cookies for breakfast will be the end of the world when I, the supposed adult, use my DVR to record The Real Housewives of Orange County marathon and have been know to drive across town, completelty out of my way, just to pick up the world's most amazing almond croissant for breakfast? Just who do I think I am?

I guess it comes down to the fact that in my mind they're perfect and new. These two little creatures who have their wholes lives ahead of them. Lives that I dream about for them filled with health and emotional well-being and good clean fun and wholesome nutrition. I want them to be better than me (and clearly, they already are) and make better decisions and be stronger and wiser. And it just seems like they'll need the occasional brussel sprout to pull that off.

lunatic, heal thyself.

Here are just a few things that are soothing me on this chilly Friday. I'm going to take this three day weekend to get some things in order and enjoy and take some pictures and maybe create a little something with the smallies. I'll report back on my crabbiness factor or hopefully, lack thereof, next week.

enjoy.


I'm loving these monkey cards and can't wait to see what valentine's loveliness DeMarco Designs comes up with.

Okay, so my mornings are nothing like this, but I'm really enjoying the calm light of these morning photos and maybe these quiet, powerful images will inspire me to get out of bed a little earlier and attempt to look at things differently in the mornings. Maybe.

And this. Can't.stop.watching.this and I haven't even been that much of a U2 fan since high school, but this is worth watching again and again. Plus, how can you not love a song that uses the world "rapadize" in a way that gives you goose bumps? not me.

f u n k y

Every mood needs a mascot (and its own cheering section in this case). I hope you like her because I'm thinking she'll be around for awhile. And yes, I realize that I'm not so much Asian or all that little, but I like her. She's pissed off and she makes me feel better.

I'm in a funk that just won't lift. I thought for sure that once the holidays were behind me I would embrace 2007 with a genuinely refreshing new attitude. Not so. I just can't seem to get over how much I hated 2006's fucking guts. I've been on the verge of tears since New Year's Day when I truly thought magic would happen and the f u n k would lift. Instead I'm swearing like a sailor and yelling at little boys who can't seem to share their mountain of new toys or eat anything or leave me alone. There. I said it. I'm a bad mom and person but that's how I feel. I just want to be left alone. Alone to brood and mope and pout and scream and swear and rant and drink cocktails. Yet, even writing that I know this isn't who I want to be. I want to be breezier. Calmer. I want to care less that everything isn't perfect. I want it not to grate on my last shred of patience that christmas wrapping paper is still rolling around my laundry room tripping me up every time I attempt to pull yet another load of clothes from the dryer. I want to feel less enraged that I keep finding ornaments under every piece of furniture even though the one post-holiday thing I've managed to accomplish was to take down the tree. I want the back of my car not to be filled with bags and bags of things to return. Things that were bought with hard earned money by family and friends in an attempt to mark the season for my family and let us know that we're loved. Too bad it's all the wrong color, size, taste - just all wrong. And then I hate myself for having these problems. These incredibly privileged problems of mine. These are not real problems. Not to a sane person anyway.

So, please excuse me whilst I attempt to get over myself and embrace the good and the real and refocus my energy. Part of me thinks the whole "if you don't have anything nice to say..." adage should be put into affect here on pixie sticks, but the other part of me thinks nobody reads this thing anyway and hey! if you do, you've been warned right up front that I'm cranky and by the way, isn't that what blogs are for? To share (okay...vent) my feelings about my life? In the meantime, I'm fighting hard not to say this to anyone who dares to ask me how I am or wishes me a Happy New Year.

oh yeah, Happy New Year, by the way.