Skip to main content

back on the horse?

and now I've discovered that, since the latest iPhone update, the blogger app does nothing but crash when you try to use it. apparently a much needed update to the app is late in coming. will wait and see.

so, here I am, on my computer, like I used to be.

I'm sick right now. I've been fighting this weird cold situation since over a week ago. it didn't get bad until about Thursday. I wound up taking Friday off of work, but I didn't feel too awful (just sounded like someone you didn't want your kid around) and spent the day getting caught up on laundry and general tidying around the house. I didn't really feel terrible until evening, when I sat in a daze at gymnastics, trying not to breathe on anyone. yesterday was much the same. I attempted a little productivity, which took me to about 3, when I went to take a nap. and pretty much stayed in bed (minus coming down to have some soup) until this morning at 9:30. today, i'm skipping church, but will have to venture out later to take Layla to the gym for team pictures. I suppose i'll have to do some grocery shopping at some point, too. unfortunately.

anyway, while chilling in my bed, I've been reading over old blog posts. like really old ones. and I've made some interesting observations of my "old life".
  • even though our old house was small and kind of a dump, I really miss it. well, not the green carpet or the ugly kitchen. and not the squirrels in the walls, the mice in the garage, or the rats under the deck. but I miss the garden, the neighbors, the proximity to the library and grocery store, and all of that.
  • I was very resourceful. I spent a ton of time and energy growing food in the garden, baking bread, shopping the grocery store sales flyers, and all that.
  • I beat myself up a lot about the state of my house and how "lazy" I was. (nothing new or surprising there.)
  • I was a psychological mess for most of my 30s. i'm actually really glad to have made it through all that without an intervention or being institutionalized.
  • having young kids made me CRAZY, but I loved them so much. I honestly would go back in a second if given the chance. I love my kids now, and I wouldn't trade who they are right now, but I SO miss the little kid phase of things. I miss cartoons and playdough and naps and playgroups and ride-on toys and dress-up and invented spellings and my walls plastered with marker drawings.
  • although it was busy, life was simpler.
I can't say for sure if life was better then or now. it's easy to idealize the past when you are experiencing dissatisfaction with the present. I also know that it's easy to idealize the future for the same reason. I think I did a fair amount of that then, too. or I idealized what I thought our life should look like, and bemoaned that it didn't. I think that i'm really good at the whole dissatisfaction thing. I should probably work on that. it's not that i'm ungrateful for the present. or that I was ungrateful for what was the present back then... I think that i'm always striving for what could be. always searching for the BEST way to live or be or raise kids or whatever. there always seems to be this unattainable goal that I want to reach. is that good? is that bad? I don't really know. I do know that it seems to be a constant, since THAT is one thing that has not changed in the 8 years since I started this blog..
wait. no. make that almost 9. NINE!!! holy smokes. that's a long time. I just totaled it up, and this post will make 948 posts. dang. I have a lot to say. not that that is any big surprise.

so... does any of this mean anything? not really. i'm just blabbing through my fingers, as usual. i'm going to try to keep up this blog more. I know, I say that all the time (well not all the time, just when I remember it, which isn't actually that often). and maybe I will and maybe I won't. I like the record it has kept. It has functioned like a journal for me, and I think that's important. some day, maybe my children will read it and see how much I cared about doing what was right (or maybe just how crazy I was), and how hard I tried. I don't know. or maybe i'll just spend a "sick" weekend sitting in bed and reading about my life. but I want it written down. and not just in snippets on facebook, or snapshots on Instagram. the space for thinking is lacking in those venues.

but now it's time for real life, kids and chores and errands, etc. we'll see where this goes from here.

Comments

you may like...

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...

what I wore wednesday

iiiiiiiiiiiiiit’s wednesday again!!! which means it’s time for me to brag about all of my incredibly well-thought out and likely expensive fashion endeavors prove to the world that I didn’t wear jammies all week. well, not all week… wednesday: tank: old navy, thrifted cardigan: handmedown jeans: thrifted flip flops: kohls earrings: target scarf: thrifted I was SO excited to find this scarf! it’s gorgeous! very silvery and shimmery, the blue flowers and so cute, AND it’s short! for somebody like me, who is of the not-so-tall persuasion, really long scarfs (or even standard length scarfs) can sometimes be a little overwhelming. you know? it’s like, “how many times can I wrap this thing around my neck before you can’t see my head anymore?” at any rate, this one is awesome and I love it and expect to see it on me a lot! I also found the process of trying to take a picture to be quite entertaining. I have a ‘people dog’, meaning, wherever her people are, that is where she th...

blessed with good oral health!

well, i made it another 6 months with no cavities! i had a dentist appointment today. my second in six months, but prior to that, i don’t think i’d been in 4+ years. oops. i was much less nervous for this appointment than i was for the last one. last time i figured my luck had run out and because i’d been bad about seeing the dentist, this time i’d really ‘pay’ for it. but no. other than a little excessive scraping of tartar (4 years’ worth), everything was fine. around the time i turned 20, i pretty much assumed, every time i went to the dentist, that this was finally my time for a cavity. i mean, how long really, can one person go without ANY cavities? well, now i’m kind of over that and figure that maybe my teeth are just impenetrable or something. at any rate, every time the dentist comes in at the end of my cleaning, pokes around for a minute and tells me my teeth look great, i breathe a sigh of relief and feel tremendous gratitude for my good teeth. the no cavities thing is only ...

“uncle!”

i ran my dishwasher last night. i know it’s a few weeks too soon, but i have declared my lenten ‘fast’ over. no, i didn’t just give up because washing dishes by hand was too ‘hard’. rewind to 8:30ish yesterday morning. i went to get micah some cereal and discovered that there were like 4 mini wheats in the bag in the cupboard. given that i buy cereal at costco most of the time AND that i have no pantry, i usually take one of bags out to keep in the house, and the remaining bag, in the original box, is stored on a shelf in the garage. i went out to retrieve the second bag. it was empty. HUH? the empty bag, was in the box, unopened. then i discovered a hole, somewhere between the size of a tennis ball and a golf ball, in the side of the bag. HUH? then i looked down on the floor and around the shelf and discovered some small samples of telltale ‘evidence’ to backup the suspicion i didn’t want to acknowledge. <insert favorite swear word here> so i started looking ar...

revisiting the 2010 bucket list

a month or so ago, i posted the beginnings of my ‘to-do’ list for 2010. i’m totally stealing this from kate and debbie, but it’s a good idea.  i had a good start of 6 items… but i know there’s way more i want to add to it. spin my own yarn spend more time in nature. read all of jane austen’s books. can my own veggies/fruits acquire a sewing machine re-learn to play the piano exercise regularly (more days of the week than not – really!) finish reading the entire bible make an effort to spend time individually with each of my children mellow out philosophically (if you don’t know what that means, just read a few of my posts and you’ll likely find some crazed post where i’m ranting about my strong disagreement about something generally accepted by the status quo) beat myself up less (again, just read a few posts) take better care of the dog. she’s 13 now and i need to make the most of the years i have left with her. (okay, this one i...