being a Mommy

since i'm a stay-at-home mom sometimes my brain wanders. like about how my Christian beliefs and my mommmy-ness line up (or not so much).
for instance... i believe that God let his only son die on the cross for the sins of the world. ...God let his ONLY SON DIE on a cross for the sins of the world. Not me dude. i'm selfish... obviously He's God and i'm not *thank you!!* but there is NO CHANCE this happens if i only get ONE child. NOPE.

also the whole Abraham & Isaac story baffles me more everytime i think about it now. So they thought that Sarah was barren, then at 90 years old she has Isaac. Then Abraham is supposed to take Isaac to offer him as a sacrifice. Seriously? Are you kidding me?! I realize this was back when sacrifices were commonplace, but his only son from a wife he thought was barren?? Nope. And I know the whole story... I know Abraham didn't have to actually put the knife to Isaac and sacrifice him. I still say there's not a chance that's happening if I'm involved.

Makes me question my faithfulness a little. For me that's the one line you do not cross. Mess with just about anything and I can deal with it. You mess with my child. Nope. It definitely brings a whole new dimension to a lot of Bible stories for me. But it also makes me pray that I constantly remember Lucy is not MINE, she is God's and I get to raise her, teach her & take care of her for a short while.
Great is THY faithfulness, absolutely.

whine... whine... wine?

feeling very whiny tonight so i decided to focus a little bit of energy on a happy list for today. also pulled out my old happy list to try to remember other happy times too (if there are happy past & happy present then there will be happy future times too). 2 + 2 = 4.

happy list for today:
1. *finally* finished a mix cd i promised a friend

2. Lucy woke up very early this morning BUT came to snuggle in bed with me

3. i downloaded Paula Fuga's ep on iTunes and any music that involves Jack Johnson or his type of music is a happy thing

4. the weather here was gorgeous today! and i could enjoy it more because we're finally supposed to get a little rain tomorrow.

5. ...isn't that sad... that's where it ends for today... that is how whiny i am right now. seriously though, i dropped my birthday cake all over the kitchen floor tonight. a cake i specifically asked for b/c i was so excited to have cake. such a silly thing.

happy list past (#100-115 of one old list of 117):
100. colored fountains in lake sno-tip
101. wearing d's big oatmeal wool sweater
102. kurt (???)
103. playing piano
104. crazy stripe sweater from Gap/"butt-ugly" sweater
105. llama llama!
106. sitting w/Robert Sean Leonard on NYC subway
107. accidentally walking through movie set - Family Man with Nick Cage & Tea Leone
108. Fat Cats at Rutgers
109. seeing Life Is Beautiful at ft.wayne cinema center
110. Caribou Coffee with Carrie in Columbus
111. Clay Cafe in Columbus
112. 4-story Barnes & Noble
113. iced mochas
114. when i tell D about my current crush & she acts so happy she might burst
115. free postcards in NYC
See it's good to keep happy lists on an ongoing basis because i don't think until i read that again that i would've remember fun things like colored fountains in lake sno-tip. :)

still waiting on the world to change

so tonight i was watching a David Gray special we taped off of one of the music channels we get (fuse, maybe?) and his recent music worked beautifully as a muse for writing poetry. it wasn't on purpose, i was just listening to his gravelly (sp?) voice and picked up a pen and a poem came out. i haven't been hit this hard by poetry in ... well.... forever. really. like a decade or something. so here it is...



Flippin, stickin
playhouse-trippin
Where was i when i was lookin
i went to find what i knew i had
the past
the Truth
the Love
..... A field afar
with wildflowers (FULL)
Where did i go What did i do
Whatever. everything i saw was you.

what did i do to earn your love
what did i do to earn your love


Nothing.
it just was.

the grass. the hill. your hands. the dance.
and somehow i just lost my chance.
where did you go you go you go

the Love
the lies
the past
my chance
the Truth
and oh, the Beautiful Dance.

Flippin, stickin
playhouse-trippin
You took it all when i stopped lookin

My Birthday!

HA! My birthday is still a couple of weeks (2 weeks and 4 days) away, and already I'm thinking about it and planning it. See, last year kind of sucked. So this year I want to celebrate. (fyi celebrate for me means coffee & cupcakes, not drunkenness.) so i combined my thoughts about my Happy List and imagined my perfect birthday. I decided in a perfect world, we would magically spend a day in chicago (magically = no car/train/bus ride to get there). i would love more than anything else to take Lucy and go to the Art Institute to the room where my favorite painting is: Seurat's Sunday Afternoon at the Park... or Sunday en la grand jatte... whatever you'd like to call it. Most who don't know art might know it as the painting that Cameron stares at for a while in Ferris Beuler's Day Off. it seems to be the most calm room in the world to me... i believe there's a Picasso in there, and a van gogh maybe??... anyhow last time i was there it was all wood floors, normal white museum walls, and a bench to sit on... just completely serene to me. anyhow i can just imagine going there and enjoying that room with Lucy for a while.... Brad's in chicago too, but he's NOT an art fan, so maybe he could go to niketown and get some tennis shoes?
oh and of course then we'd go to get some cupcakes and coffee afterward. basically just enjoy a CITY. no suburbs just for one whole day. eat some food at a restaurant that's not a chain. i could use that.

alright, happy list... some classics:
1. earl greyer when i have a headache
2. foozball when rick & cam are playing
3. movie night (sometimes)
4. paper daisies
5. portsmouth, NH (esp the Elvis Room)
6. bonfires at the reservoir in huntington
7. plymouth, MA (home of our forefathers and cranberry world)
8. party at Shan's (4/99)
9. jones 'pink' soda
10. surviving graduation
posting some classics tonight b/c tomorrow is my doctor's follow-up appt and i am anxious. anxious. anxious. here's hoping for sleep. to sleep perchance to dream.

who do you think you are?

sorry, i have that john mayer trio (was it the trio??) song stuck in my head.
it's a great song and really at this point anything is better than TMBG ABC's songs from the dvd that Lucy is currently ob-sessed with. at least she's learning from it but it might be about to "disappear".
i don't have a happy list top 10 for today. i'm feeling pretty happy and blessed without a list tonight. lots and lots of Lucy laughter (resulting in mommy laughter) filled the day today. and the house across the street from us where there are always about 150 people, lots of trucks & trailers, loud language, and all-around sketchiness... well lets just say they had 1 firetruck and 3 police cars in front of their house tonight. and if the cops are busting up any of the sketchiness going on in there then i am happy about it! i didn't move my adirondack chair around to the front yard to watch like i wanted to... but... i did watch from the front door like a little kid on christmas morning.

looking for God's blessings

i made it my new goal to make a top 10 happy list for each day. to focus on what God has blessed me with and even though i'm not always "feeling" it... to FIND it and realize it.
so for today here are my top 10 (i'm tired so five are from today and five are from my old lists):

10. fuzzy wool sweaters (this is a repeat several times over on my old lists)
9. gumball machine rings
8. my lucid bootleg
7. the wild cat & the raptor (some of my favorite roller coasters)
6. meteor showers
5. finding that my Jack Johnson concert "passport" has a free song download code
4. having someone ask me how i am and knowing they're listening (thanks Mom)
3. Lucy's laughter & giggles
2. comfy pink pj's
1. Lucy constantly saying "mommy" and giving me kisses

trying to catch up

so lately i've been thinking about getting a laptop (major purchase!) and writing more. i think f/b has been sucking a lot of time that i should be spending elsewhere. and while it's nice to keep up on what's going on with everyone it doesn't necessarily help one feel centered or balanced. it kind of helps spread out where one's thoughts are and right now balance is necessary. also everytime Lucy raids one of my bookshelves and brings a book to me (one of her favorite past-times), she brings either children's book publishing guide from 2008, writing & publishing for dummies, making a literary life, the writer's guide to publishing.... you see where i'm going with this. it must be a sign.
so i'm blogging.
not exactly professional "write 50 pps per day" writing, but better than no writing.
and definitely more than just updating my profile status.

also i find myself as of late re-visiting my Happy List often. almost daily. i have my pseudo-current Happy List, my back-when-we-lived in the Barky's basement Happy List and my oldest/things from college life Happy List. the medicine i'm on currently is for a potential facial nerve (disease? disorder?) problem and it can cause mood swings/if you're already down it enhances that feeling. also it tends to make me really tired & worn out which doesn't help with feeling down... and someday i'd like Lucy to have a sibling & i can't do that on this medicine, so that doesn't help anything (and also reminds me i've already done the miscarriage route once)... it all kind of snowballs. (my potential diagnosis is Trigemenal Neuralgia...look it up sometime) so my happy list does what loved ones can't/don't do when i'm feeling down and it's too late to call. i'm seriously considering putting the un-edited version of all Happy Lists on my blog. this would be a big step for me. but sometimes when i read things about what makes someone else happy, it reminds me of something that makes me happy... or even sometimes a memory i've forgotten about. so maybe my happy list would make someone else feel good too.
for tonight i'll share one memory from my college Happy List: seeing TMBG for free at Purdue in the POURING rain, and they still shot off the confetti cannon. it was great seeing all that paper confetting just wet & sticking to the 10 people right in front of the cannon. :)
goodnight.