Benji - "What if you were chewing silly putty and it came out your ears?"

Me - "Why don't we talk about something that's real and not so silly?"

Benji - "Ok. What if there was a thousand dogs stacked on top of each other, barking at the same time?"

Me - "Benji."

Benji - "Ok. What if there was a thousand dogs stacked on top of each other, farting at the same time?"

From the imagination of little boys.

Grateful for

tomato plants
cucumbers
hard work that yields results
peace
sunlight
air conditioning
having hope
having friends
the refining fire
understanding
loving family
self awareness
a little boy with a curious, sweet mind
a quality pillow
use of a working car
use of a working running stroller
the testimony of others
my journal
changes
a tall glass of cold, clean water
a slice of watermelon
good memories
a piano
the occasional deep, analytical, mind-blowing conversations
things to look forward to
lying under a tree, looking up
hand written letters, phone calls
going out to eat at a nice place once in a while
and in contrast, preparing and baking a good meal at home
meeting new people
having goals and charging full force after them
possibility
the whole picture

Are you completely and utterly honest in your journal? Do you edit or censor yourself?

This topic has been on my mind a lot, ever since the Susan Powell thing where her husband and father-in-law wanted to publish her journals to slander her, based on the things she wrote in them. She was honest in her journals, and now it seems to be coming back to haunt her.

I used to censor myself. I would omit certain things, or write things and rip them up, or not write at all. But I've come to value being honest and open in my journals.

When I'm gone, my family will read my journals.  I think about this often, and write what is in my heart. Most of my entries are positive. I write about childhood memories. I write about my thoughts and ideas and theories. I write about things and people that have touched my life. I write about important events, get togethers, birthdays, weddings, etc. I write a lot about my family members and friends and eventful things going on in their lives. Perhaps I'll write about a great conversation I had with a friend or things I learn in church or from my study that speak to me. I'll write about funny and cute things my little boy does and how he is learning and experiencing the world. I copy memorable quotes and write Thankful For lists occasionally.

But sometimes I write about the negative too. I write about my struggles and trials, about the pain/loneliness/sadness/fear/whatever is weighing on me. I don't exclude those. In fact, in some of my darkest times, writing it out is what saves me. It helps me clear my head and heart and puts me in the direction of a course of action. It's a problem solving method for me. There are a couple very personal things that will remain only in my head and heart and never reach the paper, but for the most part, I write about everything.

Here's the key when looking at a journal... it's a "whole picture" thing. You can't just snatch one event from the past or one entry in a journal and define a life from that. You have to look at a person's life as a whole picture, as the person they ended up as and the good they have done. Decisions and challenges and events shape us (based on how we handle them) but they do not define the entirety of our lives. Maybe that's why it makes me so sad about Susan Powell's journals. She was a good woman and mother and she had it together (at least outward appearances suggest this, we may never know). Whatever things she struggled with and wrote about, she apparently conquered. They were trying to assign labels on her character based on things she wrote about and overcame years ago. That's unfair.

I know the risks I take in being open in my journal. I am completely aware of the fact that people could read them and assign labels to my character (actually, that worry is always on my mind, as I constantly worry what others think of me). But I would hope beyond hope that if my family reads my journals and writings, they will take from them the whole picture- that they will understand that I share most things so they can see what I went through and grew from; so they can relate to me on a level they would be unable to if I deliberately left certain things out to paint a prettier picture of myself; so they can see I was a real person. I honestly and truly believe it would be a disservice if I wrote only rainbows and butterflies and things I thought they should read. They would be missing out on the good stuff, on the lessons I learned that they can adapt to their own experiences.

So yeah, I want to be relatable and real. I have the constant fear that my forthcoming will be the demise of my reputation (honestly, it's pretty much shot anyway), but the possibility (and probability, in my case) of my candor helping someone in their time of need outweighs my fear. If my struggles help someone else, I will write everything.

I've read some journals of my grandmother. She wrote lists. Lists of what to buy at the store, what each kid wore on Easter, and what she ate that day and the like. Ok stuff to read, but nothing too personal or interesting. But then she had one or two small exceptions (not even entries- mere sentences) when she laid it all on the line, good and bad. She wrote about how she sometimes felt unwelcome in her husband's family and how she missed her brothers and her home in the South. She wrote how she loved her children and how each of them was different and unique in their own ways. She wrote about her husband and his career and talents. Reading things like that make me want to hug her and ask her to tell me more. It makes me love her. I am grateful she wrote those. I am grateful my mom wrote in her journals and started me on writing.

This is becoming awfully long, but I have a few more things. I've been having this reoccurring dream, of treasure of my grandparents. I think the idea of treasure came to me because my grandpa actually did hide things in the walls and crevices of his house, and when we visited, we always speculated what was in there and to dared each other to find out. So I started having dreams in which I searched for their treasure. The dreams occurred in different locations, and the treasure in different places. In one dream, it was in the my aunt's house above her kitchen; one time it was in the tunnels and passages of a sky scrapper; once it was in a tiny, dark, foreboding room in an abandoned mansion and to get to this room, I had to pass through progressively darker and smaller and creepier rooms. Sometimes I will be SOOO close to finding the treasure of my grandparents. I'll be at the door, and for a fleeting second I see the contents of the room- black shadows of an antique dresser, a dressmaker's dummy, a piano. In the few moments I'm given to view the room, I strain my eyes for any sort treasure, barely visible in the pitch blackness, and then the dream ends.

And then about a year ago, after many variations of the dream, I discovered the treasure. I was standing in an attic, and before I even saw anything, I knew. It was spacious and brilliantly light by huge windows in the sloped ceiling and the walls were a warm light wood. It was very inviting, unlike the idea of dark attics and hidden rooms I had been searching in. In the center of the room there were hundreds of peach and soft pink lengths of flowing fabric hanging from the ceiling, swaying on their own. The fabric was so thin and airy it was almost invisible, and had more of the consistency of a cloud than fabric. You could walk through them like a beam of light in fog. On the end of each piece of fabric was something of my grandmothers. One was a teacup and saucer she loved, they were worn and chipped. One was a tube of lipstick, the metal casing stained with rust. One was a book she loved (Gone with the Wind), it was dog-eared and falling apart. Off to the side, there was a shelf with books on it. I opened the books. They were her journals, and in them she wrote all about her life and her thoughts, hopes, fears, joys, desires, struggles, everything. There were old photo albums of my young grandparents and their kids- pictures of them I had never seen before. They were sepia and black and white- photographs of all of them in different setting and stages of life. The photos were yellowing and the pages were coming loose. I soaked it in, looking at everything I could get my hands on in the short time I knew I would have there. On the other side of the room were toys my mom and her sisters had when they were children. There was a vintage rocking horse, a wooden sled, and a child's bicycle. Once shiny apple red, the bicycle was now dull with time.

When I woke up, I think I actually cried. The treasure of my grandparents was them- their lives, their children, their journals, their memories. It was so beautiful, everything was old and worn but had been well loved and cherished and spoke of their joy.

Sometimes I have reoccurring dreams that stop reoccurring once they have resolved themselves. Not this one. I still sometimes dream of the treasure of my grandparents, and I am always happy that I do. It's still different each time, but the theme is always the same. I had the treasure dream again last night. Perhaps that is why it's on my mind. And conveniently, it relates to the topic of journals. I absolutely treasure the journals of my family members. I wish they had written more. I cannot think of a better gift they could give me, than that of the story of their life from their point of view. It is treasure to me. I want to give that to my children and my family.

Round 2: The Stupid Things That Make Me Laugh

Pretty much nothing of importance, or significance, or substance, will be reported by me anymore. But this video is funny anyway. I like the "HanS" part.

Oh the stupid things that make me laugh

I almost died yesterday. At the top of the basement stairs, I've affixed a baby gate to prevent the boy from tumbling down the stairs. Yesterday after he took a quick swim in the inflatable backyard pool, I hung his dripping clothes on the gate. I didn't properly wring them out because the boy's lips had turned purple from cold and I was anxious to plop him in a warm tub. So they dripped into a puddle and I didn't notice. Later on, after he was in bed, I was cleaning the kitchen and saw a can of soup sitting near the stairs. I walked toward the can to fetch it and put it away when I slipped, in my big clunky shoes, on the puddle. I crashed through the locked baby gate, falling headfirst and backward, down the stairs. I was at such an angle that my head would crash to the stairs in less than seconds.

It is amazing how fast the mind works in a moment of crisis, and time really does slow down, as they say. My brain did fast calculations on the angle of my body vs. the upcoming stairs. vs. the time I had left to crash into said stairs, and quickly rejected the option of just reaching my arms back behind me; I would end up tumbling down in backward summersaults anyway. It saw the rail as the only other option and chose that. My hand reached over and slammed into the rail and wall with all it's might and grasp, and my arm snapped tight, jerking my body and head from the stairs. My body was at a frighteningly precarious angle- my body perpendicular by inches to the slope of the stairs, my straight feet at the top step, the big toes of the foot that had lost a shoe literally grasping the edge of the top step to keep my balance. I hung there, listening to the baby gate crash to the floor and the soup can tumble down the stairs and crash into the bookcase at the bottom. I must have been in shock, because I just let myself hang there until my arm started shaking. I lowered my feet, step by step until I had enough leverage to pull myself up by the rail. And then I stood there staring at the puddle on the floor for several minutes, rubbing my arm and fingers. They were sore and likely to bruise.

Thinking back on it, I realize I felt no fear at all, not when I fell, not in mid-air, not standing afterward staring at the scene of the crime. It was just a very calm thing. Weird, I know. How can things be calm in the midst of almost crashing down the stairs headfirst? But it was. In the heat of the moment, I became very calm and still as survivor mode took over. It knew what to do and did it, making fraction-of-a-second choices. I certainly didn't leave my body, but I understand that something calm, assured, and logical took over and saved me.

So today I am very grateful for stair rails, survivor mode, and another day in which I have the chance to properly wring out wet clothes and wipe up puddles.

I love this music video. It makes me feel like I could do anything.

Weird But True

I've been giving my blog a new look and for some reason, it doesn't show my list of friends' blogs on the side. It also doesn't show my blog archive. Yet if you click on any random blog entry, there they will be! Weird. I don't get it. I tried fixing it, but for the life of me I was stumped. Any computer or blogging wizzes want to add imput on what I may be doing wrong or how I can get those lists back up on the main page? Thanks! And many apologies for neglecting my blog. Many apologies but no promises. I am flaky as hell and have no motivation to change quite yet. Perhaps in the future though. :)

Where did this blonde hair come from? It used to be so dark.

Winter: Not Over 'till the Ice Cream Truck Sings

The groundhog doesn't determine when winter is over; the Ice Cream Truck does. When the sounds of the Ice Cream Truck become a regular fixture in the mixture of sounds I hear daily, I'm confident the days of coldness and snow are over. It's time for sun and growing and running and spending the majority of one's day outside, preferably in a swimsuit and with chronic bare-feet.

On the weekends, when I have halves of hours of free beautiful weather, I go outside and dig in the dirt, ridding the garden of weeds and myself of stress. I pull at the weeds so hard that my forearms are burning and throbbing for several days after, but it's a good pain. It's a feeling of satisfaction, of hard work, of throwing bodily caution away to make a dent in the ever expanding law of entropy (which states that everything moves in the direction of disorder when left alone; in this case, overgrowing weeds are the state of disorder and if left alone, would take over the yard, world, everything, if not attacked first).

I bring Benjamin out and let him wander about the yard or try to climb up the slide, or push a toy truck around the patio. He would forgo meals in order to spend more time outside.

Sometimes the rich, full scent of damp soil and torn-up plants causes me to pause, breathe in deeply several times, to feel the sun on me, to smell what it really feels like to be alive. The smell of earth is the smell of life to me. It's like a secret that is only whispered to me every so often, so rarely that I forget what it means sometimes, but to be reminded is to be refreshed.

Sometimes I'm quite confident I've been born in the wrong era or geographical location. I should have been born 80 years ago, on a farm or a ranch, so I could be near this smell all the time. I should marry a cowboy. When I was at school in Idaho, I loved the rural-ness of the place: the huge, open, vivid sky; the hay stacks one could crawl up on and stare at the stars; the rivers where all sorts of silly and satisfying activities took place (bridge jumping, canoeing, etc); the chilly nights on the sand dunes sitting around a bonfire (one always left smelling of burnt wood and of cold); and of course, the smell of earth. Urbaniers have forgotten (or perhaps we have never even learned) what to live is, to feel this way, to have this love affair with soil, earth, life. Who has a love affair with dirt? Only crazy people. I suppose I'm crazy then. Nuts, I tell ya.

Sometimes as I'm digging, the tinkling toy-piano melodies of the Ice Cream Truck sound faintly in the distance, become louder as they draw nearer to my street, and fade as they move on. The songs that blast softly from the slowly moving truck promise a certain mysterious excitement, a variety of things to choose from (and all of them good), beconing the children with come-one-come-all open arms, like the candy man, who mixes it with love and makes the world taste good.

"Benjamin! Benjamin!" I yell to him, trying to get him excited about the Ice Cream Man, but his interest has now moved to earthworms and how they squish in his fingers. The magic doesn't mean anything to him yet, but perhaps someday it will. Maybe in a few years he'll run frantically to me before I've even heard the melodies; his ears trained for this sound as a dog's are to a high-pitched whistle. To get children trained to respond to the melodies is the goal of the Ice Cream Man, but I don't mind. I hope that I'll have a couple dollars to give him, so he can run back, flag down the Ice Cream Man, stand on his bare tiptoes to see all the choices, all the possibilities. And then he'll sit on the porch, sun from above causing him to squint as he digs his toes into the dirt and licks his prize, with streams of blue, red, or chocolatey stickiness running down his chin. Content, alive.