So, I started to write a post here about maternity and the sacrifices and choices we make, and you know what? It turned into a post that should be on my parenting blog, so that’s where I am putting it. Tomorrow, LOL. I went on and on and on about how we ought to pay attention to ourselves, and not give over everything that makes us who we are to our children. So, since that kinda left me sad, I thought I would write here about some of the things that I used to do before kids, or at least before eight kids, and how I plan to go about reclaiming some of that stuff that makes me who I was am.

First off, I used to read. Now, last Friday, I posted my new revised schedule. It’s a loose schedule, and I didn’t come right out and say it, but reading time is built into it by default. Remember that part about moving away from the computer and not coming back until at least 8pm? There will be time to read in there. In fact, I plan to start One Fifth Avenue today. While some of you younger mothers are looking for Japanese Weekend Maternity, I’ll be shopping for books. Mostly on my shelves and at the library, because LORD KNOWS, I have neglected reading for so long that I have at least a 10 year backlog of stuff to read. I don’t need the latest best seller, the one from back in the day will suffice.

I also stopped scrap booking, because I couldn’t leave it long enough to pee without someone getting into it. I’m thinking I could plan spreads, put them in a file box, and then go to the library for a couple hours on Saturday to put them together. The good news is that now that I no longer have to shop for Ingrid and Isabel, I can afford to have my pictures printed again. Especially since my weight isn’t budging and I am not needing the smaller clothes I was really hoping to need

Another thing I quit doing was singing. That’s over, too. See, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it until that talent show I got coerced into. That multi-headed serpent isn’t going back into it’s box so easily as I might have hoped. No, who am I kidding? I’m loving it. I sang all night Friday (and I do mean all night–it was a youth lock-in, remember?) and then I sang again for an hour last night after baptism. This video from Sunday afternoon is a direct result of my screeching out on the National Anthem at 6am on Saturday. I simply could not allow that to remain un-corrected.

And also, I picked up my old guitar, which I last touched 24 years ago. It’s been at Mama’s house, in my old closet (along with old love letters and my bridal bouquet). It needs new strings, and a new saddle, but I think that’s doable. I have forgotten everything I knew, but I’m giving myself two weeks to be able to pick out a simple tune. Very simple—I only have five strings currently, LOL. I’m planning to rectify that as soon as I can get to a music store. Like right after I hit publish. See, no longer needing stylish maternity wear has it’s benefits, doesn’t it?

Let’s talk about some names that stop traffic. You know the kind they drop in the movies so theeaudience learns that the character has insane amounts of money, impeccable taste and oodles of class?? Names lke Tiffany’s, Cartier, and my favorite, Louboutin. Oh that last one isn’t in there? Well, it should be. But let’s just back away from the shoes so nobody gets hurt, mostly me, and get back to the baubles.

If I were to decide to buy cartier it would probably be the Pasha watch shown at the right. That pink dial just gets me, and I do like the look and feel of stainless steel for the band. And plus, it’s water resistant to 100 meters, so when I forget and plunge my hand into hot sudsy water because I need to clean something, it wouldn’t die. You don’t even want to know how many watches I have killed that way! So tell me, which of these Cartier watches is your favorite, and why?

When you choose a watch, do you prefer form or function, or are they equally important to you? Do you think of a watch as an heirloom? I know that my grandparents probably didn’t think of them that way, but their watches are among my most treasured possessions: I have them displayed in my kitchen, so I see them each time I go in there. I still remember how those watches looked on their wrists. Isn’t it funny what the mind holds on to?

How many funeral visitations will I go to before it stops being about my grandparents?

:booking:… What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

Aside from school libraries, I remember first the library here in my home town. When I was a teen, it was located in a building beside the old middle school. It was called the old middle school to distinguish it from the new middle school that opened the year I went into sixth grade. But I don’t remember going there then. I don’t remember going to the library until I was in my teens, because I rode my bicycle. And yet, I must have gone before that, because I remember being there, just not getting there. I remember the green carpet and the sun through the windows, and the smell of old books. It was just one room, this library.

Amazingly enough, almost three decades later, the library has relocated. Now we have two whole rooms. And the next county over charges 20 bucks a year for a card if you don’t live there, which I refuse to pay. Needless to say, I buy most of the books I read.

Wow. Just wow. I spent the weekend with my family. Yep, that side that I thought I didn’t mention that much but realized I did when I searched the blog. I guess that … lack … bothered me more than I was willing to admit. I guess admitting it would have hurt more than pretending I was okay with how things were. Or were not, in this case.

It was a transformational weekend. It was … a happiness to just be there with them. For the first ever, there was no tension. We were all just there together, with each other, enjoying that good feeling, and it was as if we had done it this way all my life, except that I could breathe, and I was not afraid.

One of my kids told me I was weird while we were there, and she was just joking around. I was headed out the door to go talk with my cousins who were in the yard, and I poked my head back in and said, “No, here I am just one of us.”

Will you trust me when I tell you that my words are inadequate to express my feelings? Ok, so here I am, with my Aunt and my cousin’s daughter and my Drama. And we are family. Finally.

is do the best we can do with the information we have at the time. I’m saying this to remind myself of the truth of it.

So often in life, we find out stuff later that would have changed what we did at the time. It’s still important to keep on moving forward when that happens. We cannot change the past, period. There is not one thing we can do now make the tiniest bit of difference then. It is what it is. If we fall into the trap of second guessing ourselves, and not letting ourselves move on, then we end up missing the present as well. Then we are twice-robbed, and that doesn’t do anyone any good.

If you know you did the best you could with the knowledge you had, let it go and move on. Love now. If it matters eternally, it’s already settled.

That would be my dogwood. I’ve been holding out hope, but now it is the middle of May, all the other tress are green, and yet the dogwood is not only not green, but it is also dry and brittle. Remember I told you I transplanted 2 trees last year, at the wrong time of year? Well, they both actually died, but the root ball lived on the one, so I have saplings coming up from it at least. Too bad I don’t know what it is yest, though it does resemble a peach. There are no other peach trees in the neighborhood, not even in my side yard where we dug that one up, though, so who knows.

You know what else? After all the drought, this year we have had heavy rains, and irises “hate to have their feet wet”, and so only a couple of them bloomed. Yep, two years of low bloom from the drought, followed by a year of no blooming because of too much rain. I just can’t win in the yard. Unlike my Grandmother, who could make anything at all grow. She always had the most beautiful flowers in her yard, right up until she moved out of her house. In fact, Mama has been working in the yard there this week, getting the place ready to rent. (They killed at least two SNAKES! Ugh! But remind me to tell you about AuntF and the snake story one day, it’s a good one.)

Anyway, back to the green, and not so green things in my yard. I saw an ad for <silk plants and it made me stop and think. Most people think of silk plants as an indoor item, but you can use them outside. And you know what? They don’t die if you move them at the wrong time of year, and they bloom right on time, rain or no rain. Bloom right on time. Hahah, I slay me. They come already blooming, and they stay that way, of course. Unlike mine, which apparently come not blooming and stay that way.

Ok, you want to hear the snake story? Fine. I have an Aunt with MS. AuntF is wheelchairbound, and occasionally bedridden, but she does get out and go places, and one of those places is the family reunion, which is where the story I am about to relate began. Now, she also smokes, but she has to wait for someone to light the cigarette for her, and sit with her while she smokes it, in case she drops it. This means that she smoked pretty much nonstop at the family reunion, and AuntF smokes in a style best exemplified by Hollywood, with long fingered graceful movements and a casual nonchalance. SO. We were sitting around last year, and talking, and she starts talking about the time there was a snake at her house, in the drainpipe and she “called Uncle R”. Her “Uncle R” was my Grand-dad, the same one I have spoken of several times on this blog. He happened to be very scared of snakes, which Mama and I knew, but maybe AuntF did not. So she told us that “Uncle R shot the sit out of that drainpipe”. Needless to say, I had vision of Grandad, eyes squeezed shit tight, blasting the side of the house, because yes, indeed, he did the business with a shotgun.

Fast forward 40-50 years, and we’ll wrap up with an event this week. I told you Mama had been working in the flowers at Grandmother’s, and there had been a couple of snakes killed. When she came across the last one (and also, my mother is TERRIFIED of snakes. it’s genetic. We can’t help it.), H was there. H is the grandson of AuntF, and he shot the snake. With a shotgun. And so when Mama told me, as I was laying on the floor doing my belly buster exercises, I just looked at her and said, ‘Well, did he shoot the shit out of that flowerbed border?” and we laughed and laughed and laughed. The rest of my family looked at us like we were insane. It was still funny, and I can’t wait to see AuntF again.

It occurs to me that yesterday’s post might have been a bit confusing for those of you who do not know me personally, and maybe even for some that do. I mentioned Daddy’s grave and just last week I told you Daddy bought me some shoes. Well, neither one of us has lost our minds. Daddy and Daddy are too different men. They are so different, even, that I have been told I say the word differently depending on which I am talking about, and that those who know I have two dads can tell which one I am talking about by the way I say the name. I suppose that’s true, because they feel, smell and taste different inside my head.

My first Daddy is indeed dead, and it was his dad’s funeral we attended Sunday. He died when I was thirteen, but I’d not seen him since I was 6 or 7. It wasn’t what either of us wanted, but it’s the way things happened, and there you have it. You might as well put your past behind you, because you certainly can’t change it. I remember very little about him. A jar of marbles on a dresser, being carried through the snow. I was ….not happy as a child, and my solution to that was to blank my memory. I remember very few events, even up through my teens, and my first miserable marriage. Apparently, I found a trick that worked and I stuck with it. From the small tidbits I do remember, I know he loved me, and that is enough. I can remember things if I am reminded and/or shown pictures, and that is also enough. See, no one takes pictures of bad things, so then all my memories can stay good. That’s my Daddy.

My second Daddy is my mother’s second husband. They married when I was nine, and I have called him Daddy for 31 years. And he truly is my Daddy now. It took a very long time for us to get to that point. A lot of time, and a lot of pure-tee hurt, there is no denying that. He’s a huge man, and his voice is very deep, and I was a very small child, and so I stayed scared of him until I moved away from home. And then when I came home, I guess we both decided that it could and should be different, and so we made it that way. He may have never carried me through the snow so my shoes would not get wet, but I know he loves me just the same. He’s the one who drove me to the university hospital when Drama was life flighted out of our community hospital on a breathing tube. He’s the one who drove me to the eye doctor last year when I thought I was going blind. That’s my Daddy, too.

So there you have it, as well as I can explain it, anyway.