Tea parties, nail polish, and bugs.

Happy 4th birthday Ava! Only you would dress up in your fancy flower girl dress, get your nails painted and glitter put in your hair, and then go outside, catch some bugs and make a swamp in the mud on the side of the house. Somehow I don't think the phrase "sugar and spice and everything nice" applies to you. Maybe something more along the lines of "Dirt and snails and puppy dog tails...with a bottle of nail polish and some lace."

4 years have gone by fast...you rock my world kid!








And of course...the evil little brother that came crashing into your perfect world a year ago. Sorry about that. He really is pretty cool though, if you'd pay attention to him.

To all those who doubted me...

I told you I was right. Damn chupacabras.

Linky linky!
the chupacabras among us!

Kick in the pants anyone?

I have the easiest job in the world. A job that gives me about 4 hours of free time a day, and the remaining time is semi-free. The kid sleeps all the time. And when she's not sleeping, it's easy to plop her in a high chair with some Cheerios, or throw her in the sling on my back. So why oh why have I accomplished absolutely nothing these last few weeks? I'm making a list to make me feel even worse about myself, in hopes it will inspire me to crawl out of this dark hole of procrastination.

Things I've Done:

• Sewn curtains
• Complete summer school
  

Things I Need to Do:

• Go through computer room closet and pull out useless crap
• Go through bedroom closet and pull out useless crap
• Go through hall closet and pull out useless crap
• Go through downstairs hall closet and pull out useless crap
• Take aforementioned massive amounts of useless crap to Goodwill
• Go through freezer and throw out nasty crap
• Get some packing boxes
• Clean my poor car
• Get rid of the recycling because our pantry is overflowing and our garage is starting to resemble a dump.
  

Yeah, that didn't help at all.

The Earth is round...you'll always end up back where you started.

People seem to have this uncanny ability to move to a new place and "start fresh". Something about the different scenery, lifestyle, house, whatever, seems to make a bad situation disappear, or at least make it easier to move on.

But where is home exactly? Where your original family is? Where you begin your own family? Where your roots began or where you plant new roots? Which? I think your home is always where you came from, where you began, where the people you feel connected to are. I can't think of a word in English to describe it....but in German it's called gemütlichkeit. It's not necessarily a place...just an untranslatable well-being of everything that's happened in your life, good and bad...memories of times gone by. Because we all start and end with family, and family isn't just blood. It's everyone you love....friends, pets, boyfriends and girlfriends. And that's where home is. Where all that is. Your problems will always be your problems, but the beautiful thing is, so will your family. And you can't run away from that. Ever.

I've lived in several places in my life and when you do that, you can't find where you come from on a map. All those places you lived are just that: places. You don't come from any of them; you come from a series of events. And those are mapped in memories. Contingent, precarious events, without the counterpane of place to muffle the knowledge of how unlikely we all are. Almost not born at every turn. It's amazing. Without a place, events and family slow tumbling though time become your roots. Stories shading into one another. You come from a chance meeting of two people. A smile. Love. Unlikely, but it still happened. One in a million.

Tell the story, gather the events, and repeat the good ones without fear of repeating the failures your roots experience. You learned. Repeat the goodness, pattern is a matter of keeping happiness alive. Otherwise the weave relaxes back to threads picked up by birds to make their nests. Repeat, or the story will fall and all the king's horses and all the king's men....repeat, and cradle the pieces carefully, or the events will scatter like marbles on a wooden floor.

...and so it begins

Hello Blogger!

I've gone from LiveJournal to Myspace and finally here, where I am finally satisfied with what I've got. Sorry MySpace, you just weren't doing it for me as far as blogs go.

Starting fresh is always good....my other blog lets you look back to things I wrote in high school. That's never good.

And so it begins...