Words -- the post I was going to write

I was going to write about words...how they sound, how they feel in my mouth, the emotions and visualizations that they evoke bring me comfort and joy.  I found a book a few years ago, West with the Night, written by a woman who was a pilot in British East Africa in the 1930's.  Nobody writes like that anymore!  The "poetic prose" were so meaty and filled with imagery.  With her writing, I could see it...smell it....taste it...hear it.  It's so very beautiful it makes me ache when I chew it, for chew it I must.  There is too much to simply read.

Unfortunately, the post that I crafted in my mind in the twilight moments approaching sleep has departed with my dreams.  sigh.

I've always loved words and using a plethora of multisyllabic $64 phrases makes me smile.  I do remember, at the age of 14, turning words over and over in my mouth to get the full 360 degree feeling.  It was all well and good until I was helping my dad in his workshop on the back porch and he asked me for a screw. 
"Screw...screw...screw." I repeated.  "I like how the word feels in my mouth."
My dad's response, "You probably shouldn't say that."
My naivete -- I had no idea that what I was saying was more than a simple tool.  hee hee

Words.  aahhh, how I love them.

Writing

So...I'm writing more consistently on this blog, but there's not a lot here that is extremely profound. Apparently, I'm writing just to write and if something great graces these pages, then so be it. :-) It's a rainy kind of day today, not too bad though. The clouds are dark enough to have gone beyond dreary into interesting. The breeze has picked up enough that I can see the trees gently moving acorss the way. It's not raining right now, but I have small puddles on my driveway and patio -- great for little boys to splash in, throw sticks in, and generally just revel in. What joy can be found in a puddle! Right now all I hear is the dog snoring at my feet, the whir of the bathroom fan (white noise for Annabelle as she sleeps) and the occasional car or jet outside my house...oh, and the click of the keys and hum of the laptop, of course. There's peace in the relative quiet. (Please understand with two at and under 2, it's ALL relative.) I am OK right now. I take the moments when I can be ok and wrap them around myself like a thick, fluffy blanket of comfort. I scootch into the coziness and allow myself to just breathe long and deeply. I haven't allowed myself to think anything more than surface thoughts lately. I know this will come back and bite me in the a**, but I need time away from the pain and the loss and the sadness. Last Sunday was Mother's Day. Rachel came over and we acted like it was just another Sunday. Andrew played it down, though he did take Will to get me a couple of gifts -- jukebox music, "Cowboy Country" and "Soda Fountain" -- nice, light, fun gifts. Watching Will dance to "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog" made us all join in and laugh, laugh, laugh! This coming Sunday is Rachel's birthday. I hate that her birthday had to be the first one we would go through without Mama. Rachel's HUGE on tradition and doing things the way we've always done them. Mama was a big birthday person. On your birthday, you got to choose everything we ate that day, and, if it wasn't a school day, everything we did. In the past few years, she took Rachel shopping for her birthday so she could pick out her presents. There's lots now that we can't do the way we've always done them. So, we're doing things really differently. This weekend, Rachel, Michelle, Daddy, the babies and me are going to Santa Fe. Hopefully being away will help. Hopefully being all together will help. Nothing's going to make it all right, though. It will never again be the same. I'm so sorry, Rachel, that yours had to be first. So...this post has rambled through the terrain of the mundane and pointless to the more poignant and life altering. Maybe that's what this blog is for. Hopefully, it will help.

Sleepy

So here it sit on the couch beside Will so sleepy it's hard to keep my eyelids open. It's 3:15 in the afternoon...perhaps I need to drink some water...have some protein...sleep through the night! The last is probably the ticket. Annabelle's doing GREAT sleeping through the night. Yeah! Will, on the other hand, we're having issues with. A week or so ago he finally completed the destruction of the crib tent so graciously given to us by friends. So, in order to keep him contained, we put an actual tent in his room and put the crib mattress in it. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the skill to stay on the mattress yet AND, he's a mover and a shaker when he sleeps. There have been many thumps, bumps, and owies. Last night I made a pallet next to the mattress so that if he rolled out he wouldn't hurt himself. He chose to sleep on the pallet. No worries. I thought we would be good. Not so much. He got too warm, and stripped down...completely. He was making noise, so I went in to check on him and there he was in all his glory as happy as could be. THANKFULLY, he hadn't peed or pooped anywhere -- been there, done that, and it's NOT fun. Anyway, we ended up using packing tape around his diaper to keep him from being able to unfasten the diaper or just slide it off. We would have used duct tape (it works for anything that needs to be stuck, right?), but strangely enough, my "real men use duct tape" husband is completely out. Packing tape it was. Then, he woke up crying around 11:30, I guess. Drew was so sweet to try to take care of things without waking me up. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Will was completely unconsolable. It took a while of crying for him to finally calm down and ask for a drink. We came to the conclusion that he wanted to sleep with us for a while. He laid down with me and then his head popped up, "Paci!" He rolled off the bed. "Do you want me to come with you?" I asked him as he was running in his twisty hip kind of way. "No. My got it." He finished what he was saying as he ran through the darkness of the kitchen...right into the empty 5 gallon water containers. Yikes! He burst into wails. Finally, I got him calmly to his room. He popped in his paci, laid down on the pallet, and closed his eyes. I prayed for him and rubbed his back for a couple of minutes. Occasionally, one eye would sleepily open to make sure I was still there, then it would slide back down. Then he was out. Whew. We made it. Then he slept the rest of the night. All that to say, I could certainly use a nap right now. Unfortunately, I just don't see that happening in the near future. Sigh.

I did it!

Here's my tattoo. Rachel (my baby sister) and I went to Tattoo Gallery on Hobbs today and got it done! I flip-flopped about where I wanted it -- on my foot? on my wrist? going which way on my wrist??? Choices, choices, choices. The foot wasn't good for right now. I've been doing so well working out for the past 10 weeks, and I didn't want to interrupt the good thing that I have going on with that. Getting it on my foot would mean taking a couple of weeks off while it healed. Thinking about it more, the wrist seemed good. I wanted it somewhere that I could see it without a mirror and that could be easily camouflaged, if necessary (I don't see it being necessary, but, whatever.) My right wrist was just instictive. I'm right handed, and so I would see it when I used my right hand. We went in and gave the guy the picture that Mom had drawn. He had to enlarge it just a bit, but not so much that it made it bigger than we wanted. Jason did our tats, and they look just like Mom had taken a pen and drawn it on each of our wrists. I am so very pleased! And...it certainly didn't hurt that it didn't hurt so very much! So...here it is, in remembrance of you, Mama. I love you and miss you so very much. Happy Mother's Day.

"Uh oh!" & Clapping!

Annabelle will be eight months old Saturday. Eight months old! I can hardly believe it. In that eight months she has demonstrated that she has such a different personality from Will. Will was always very gregarious, loved to show off. Annabelle, she studies things more and is a tough audience -- it takes a lot to make her laugh. She's not really fond of showing off, either. She'll do something for me, no worries, but if I ask her to do it in front of someone else, she looks at me like she's never done it before! I knew they'd be different, but I didn't expect them to be this different. Granted, my mother said that she got the three points of an equilateral triangle with me and my two sisters. I should have known. *wry smile* This week has been a week of hitting a couple of milestones. Yesterday, Annabelle started saying, "Uh oh!" It is so very cute in her little baby voice, and she says it for any and everything. It makes me smile each time I hear her say it. She's saying it a lot, of course, just because she can. And why not? Today, she clapped. The concentration that was on her face as she moved her hands together in and out...my goodness! I caught it on video, which was amazing all the way around. She was so proud of herself, waving her arms and scrunching up her little nose. What amazing joy! Oh, and should I mention she hollered, "No!" at Andrew tonight when he asked her for a night-night kiss? Ai, yi, yi! It has begun. The snowball is just starting to roll down the mountain. What a ride. What a glorious ride!

My Tat

Ok, so I don't have one yet, but it's on the horizon...perhaps Friday if I can find someone to hang out at my house with my kids while they nap so I can go with my sister. Mama had a flower that she drew when she doodled -- the same flower every time. She always said that if something happened and we needed to leave a message for each other but not identify ourselves we would leave the flower so the family would know... When it came time to put together the program for her memorial service, we wanted that flower on there. It was the flower that was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We tore up jack trying to find that flower! We FINALLY found one in one of her notepads in her bedside table. It wasn't quite right, but it was close. After we found it, my baby sister and I decided that we would get that flower as a tattoo in remembrance of Mama. When I was back in AR last time, I thought of another place we might be able to find the flower -- in her workshop materials! Sure enough, I found six for us to choose from. I was going to get it on my foot, but I've been doing so well at being consistent in my workout for the past nine weeks, that I don't want to sabotage myself...so I'm getting it on my wrist. It's not large, and I want it to wrap around the inside of my right wrist. Mom would throw a hissy -- she didn't think they were a good idea. :-) And yet, it's so very appropriate, something to make me smile each time I see it.

Quick rambling post

How did it become May already????

• This means that Annabelle is almost 8 months old, and Andrew & Will are soon to be finished with school.
• It means that if my plants don't get in the ground soon we won't have a garden this summer. YIKES!
• It means that I've been jazzercising for 9 weeks (and what a difference it's made!).
• It means it's been 3 1/2 months since Mama made her way to heaven.
• It means we've had Stitch for nearly a month.
• It means I get to go to Santa Fe in 1 1/2 weeks for my baby sister's b-day!

Life goes by so very quickly. I used to say that my life went by like a pack of extra long cigarettes -- the days were so very long, but narrow. :-) That's truly the case. Some days, it feels like I've always been married, always had kids and Mama's always been gone...there was no life before now. Sounds rather myopic.

I thank God for each day, however long and however narrow and however many I am blessed with here on this earth.