do you know who you are?

for real? in a consistent sort of way.

if so, you’re lucky.

or maybe you’re normal, and I’m in the middle of some decade-long, no end in sight midlife crisis…

I seriously confuse myself. I never really know, from one day to the next, “who” I will be when I wake up in the morning. no, this isn’t some sort of schizophrenic, multiple personality disorder kind of thing. well, I don’t think so, at least. just kidding. I mean, yes, I’m rachel. yes, I’m my husband’s wife, my children’s mother, etc. that doesn’t change.

but who I am as a mother. as a wife. as a daughter. as a generation x-er. as a christian. as a coffee lover. as a 12 years through college-er. as a former literature major. as a public school grad, parochial school survivor, homeschool advocate but homeschooling chicken with TWO kids now enrolled in public school. as a former waitress, preschool teacher, tie-dyer, pizza deliverer, secretary. as a native washintonian and whatever else fills in the description of ME.

good grief, it really changes daily.

is. this. NORMAL.

I mean, really, I guess the fact that I’ve now got a rather significant portion of life behind me… meaning I’ve been places, done things, known people, had jobs, heard music, read books, been through all the predictable phases and then some…

everything. all of this. feeds into me.

me.

ugh. let’s get a little more self-absorbed, shall we?

[aside: perhaps I should warn the reader that MY blog is sometimes a bit of a celebration of all that spews forth from MY brain. I guess you could call this my therapy. sometimes I whine here. sometimes I confess. sometimes I rant. lately, I just post pictures of what my family is doing. maybe I haven’t had much on my mind. my mom is always telling me that I should keep my opinions to myself. I’m sure she’s right. however, as this is my blog, and reading by anyone other than me (including you, mom) is completely optional, I will continue to post whatever I feel like here. (love you, mom. you ARE so right and I’m working on the mouth thing… writing it out helps with that!)]

at any rate…

maybe I just feel like so much of who I am contradicts or conflicts with other parts of who I am.

it makes me confused a good share of the time.

Comments

random diaper musings

do you ever feel at odds with yourself? i constantly feel like i'm a big wad of contradictions. and being the living-in-my-head, overthinking type i can spend years, i mean hours pondering things. it can really get me down. example: diapers. one would think that this was a relatively easy thing to handle. i've got 3 kids. i'm pretty familiar with diapers. it seems so simple; your baby needs a change so you take the old diaper off and put a new one on. done. right? no. i have this constant dilemma going on. cloth or disposable. i have 25 perfectly good fitted cloth diapers that i paid a lot of money for when i decided a couple years ago that i was done filling up landfills. so micah wears them a good share of the time. but it bugs me that they're so bulky, especially with the covers on and clothes fit funny and that totally drives me nuts. so at home, he just wears the diaper w/ no cover and when we leave the house, i put a disposable on him. not usually

but i wanted beans!

i have discovered something amazing. until recently, layla would never eat green beans. well, she used to, and then a little more than a year or so ago, she started pulling them apart and eating the seeds out of them, leaving the rest. yeah, i know she's weird. then she quit eating them all together. she would just leave them on her plate. well, a couple fridays ago, we were having our pizza and beans and something prompted shane to pull these 'trainer' chopsticks out of the drawer. i've had them for a couple of years - i think i found them at a thrift store and thought they were cute and the kids could use them when we had chinese food. but we'd all kind of forgotten about them since we rarely eat chinese food (which makes me sad). so everyone got really excited about these and layla used them to eat every last one of her beans that night. dave and i exchanged some raised eyebrows as lightbulbs were illuminating above our heads. last night i made chicken sandwiches

books

so i have, what i’ve coined as, “book ADD”. basically, i love books. i love to read. i love the king county library system and their fabulous website. i love clicking the “place hold” button. i generally have upwards of 35 books checked out, a hold list a mile long, and a running ‘tab’ of fines for overdue books. but here’s the problem. i generally have so many books and i want to read them all, that i never wind up reading any of them. i’ll bring home a book, read a chapter or two, and then the next book on my list will come in. repeat. eventually, i will have read 2 chapters of a dozen or so books, they will be due to go back, and i’ll never get around to finishing them. ugh! well, i’m officially attempting to ‘kick that habit’. at my husband’s repeated suggestion, i’m learning to make use of the ‘freeze’ button on the library’s website. this enables you to keep your hold on the book, but not receive it until you want it. it just moves other people’s holds ahead of yours. this is

pink bubblegum goo, inaugurations and insomnia...

yesterday morning, layla mentioned again that her ears hurt. so that, coupled w/ the neon green snot and the vomit-inducing cough won her an all-expenses-paid trip to the doctor's office. dual acute otitis. aka, both ears were infected. AND, get this, the doc said she had blisters on both her eardrums. BLISTERS! doesn't that sound awful? funny thing is, this was not one of those situations where it is clear as day that your kid has an ear infection (usually revealed in the middle of the night) and you start debating whether or not you can pump them full of tylenol and pray they last until 7:30am when you can call the dr.'s office and get the earliest available appointment, or if you have to go to the ER at O-dark-thirty. (btw, i'm sure my 'critics' will have a hay day with that last one, but oh well.) she really only mentioned her ears a couple of times, but never really complained or moaned or whined or cried about them like i would expect. we've

micah's first word.

are you ready for it? "this" not very profound, i know. but he goes around pointing to stuff going, "this?" and then he'll point to something else and go,"this?" it's pretty cute. (and yes mary, reminiscent of lily. we're working on 'that'.) ... i'm taking shane to the doctor today. he's been having some random bouts of feeling like he's goint to throw up. he never does, but it's usually been at night and i'm getting tired. today's the first day he's felt bad during the day, but he was awake for a couple hours last night and today he said he wanted to go to the doctor and find out what's wrong with him. so we're going. ... i don't know if i ever mentioned that we finally got layla's doctor to refer us to an allergist. YAY! so now we've been in the holding pattern of trying to make an appointment and being unable to because they don't have all the info they need from her doctor

rachel's continued ramblings

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