Good Nights

Good Nights…parenting is full of them. They sometimes come in short to the bad night, sometimes break even….but they have the power to make those bad nights seem nearly non-existent. Tonight was one such night. Just me and Sammy having some mommy/daughter time which, truth be told, is my favorite time. We started our evening out by snuggling into the same chair with a juice box (for her, not me) and some crackers. While she sat content, avidly watching The Cat in the Hat, I checked my email, cleaned out inboxes, then started in on supper. In the time it took to bake…or…cook, whatever…the chicken (which…oops, I did upside down) we snuggled through the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Yes…I know its March but sometimes the girl wants what she wants and truth be told, I do so love that special.

After a very pleasant supper, it was bath time, complete with a phone call to Grandma and Grandpa that she SAID she wanted to make but when the phone started ringing and I told her that she had to answer it she told me, quite matter-of-factly “I’m too busy, mommy.”

Her too busy consisted of pouring water from a small bottle into a large bucket.  My dad found this hilarious. She did tell them both hello and goodbye and that she loved them. Then out of the bathtub with her usual “Mommy, my feets are cold!!” She’s very conscious of her feet when they’re cold. So much so that I had to wrap them when she was standing on her little stool brushing her teeth.

After this…BREAKTHROUGH!!! I shouldn’t be bragging. I feel that, with as touch and go the whole potty training thing has been after the initial excitement wore off, I may just be jinxing myself on this. Let’s pray that I’m not. But, by convincing her that she could wear her pretty “Dora panties” to bed if she used her potty then waiting patiently while she danced around the bathroom, patience paid off and she dashed to her potty to use it! Many hugs and happy dances were exchanged after this.

She even scored herself one more than her customary five bed-time books for bed. This is, by far, my favorite time of the evening. Though, more often than not, the books are the same ones from the previous evening, her excitement over what takes place in the course of a few pages never wavers. She points out the same things, asks the same questions, and always with the same amount of zest and childish delight. It’s refreshing to see such untouched innocence, such wonder at something as simple as a mouse creating his own paw-prints in the snow.

And then she gets the one thing that has recently become part of our bed time routine. It’s going to be the most difficult one to break and I probably shouldn’t have given in to my exhaustion one evening about two months ago to lay down beside her. But alas, I did. And now, after saying prayers, after a game of “who will shut out the lights” and after Sammy scampers her way into her bed and makes herself comfortable…I hear the same words every night. “Mommy, you lay with me?”

How could one possibly turn down such a simple request from such a tiny, precious daughter? Its a few minutes out of my day…unless I fall asleep (which I have) then it usually becomes thirty minutes or more. Dustin once had to be the one pulling bedtime duty and ended up sleeping nearly two hours beside her in a bed that was far too small for his tall frame. It may have, aside from their bedtime game of hug tag, been the cutest thing I’ve seen as far as husbands and baby girl’s go.

So we laid down, I rubbed her back for a bit, she traced my cheeks and whispered strange non-sense words to me that I couldn’t really understand aside from “that’s better, Mommy.” And to bed she went!

A perfect evening.

Simplicity

The simple things…I mentioned this in my profile…that I enjoy them even when I may need reminders of what they are. The simple things can mean something different for each person.

For me it’s walking by my daughters room to see my cat curled up and sleeping peacefully in the middle of her bed, its watching Sammy play with the farm set we bought her for Christmas, all the while declaring “you can’t find me, Mommy!” when clearly, I already have. It’s watching my daughter “oh” and “ah” over a rainbow splashed upon the laminate flooring in the kitchen from a crystal hanging in the window. It’s driving over the hillside to my parent’s house, seeing nothing but hills and freedom and feeling a peace wash over me. It’s walking into my room and seeing the low glow from my grandma’s lamp sitting on the nightstand that once sat beside my grandparents bed. When my grandma had it, I remember always seeing a romance novel laying face down and open on that nightstand. I make sure to continue the trend because it reminds me of her and I feel so blessed to have such a visual reminder of one of the greatest women I will ever know.

It’s the simple things that a lot of people take for granted, that a lot of people lose sight of. It’s those little things that can bring us back from the brink of despair and give us insight into a path we never knew existed. I’m grateful to have my daughter here to point those simple things out to me and remind me so very often that there is too much going on in this world, too many wonders provided to us by the Good Lord to be caught up in the harshness of reality and the common worries of humanity. That and it’s just so much easier to sit back and enjoy.

Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.  ~Robert Brault

Writers Block (possible the reason for blogging in the first place)

Writers block – to a writer, its comparable to Armageddon, mostly because writers are generally people with a flair for over dramatization (get mad if you want fellow writers, you know it’s true. You look at a piece of work you’ve poured hours, , days, weeks, maybe even years into and tell me that you haven’t though “dear God, my world had just ended,” when you can’t figure out what happens next).

We have to be dramatic (okay, creative if it makes you feel better) to come up with half of the things that keep a plot well oiled and moving forward instead of stalling out entirely. And when we can’t come up with what to do with a nasty villain or an annoying heroine, that’s when we get creative trying to figure out methods in which to inspire our obstinate muses.

The land of the dreaded Writers Block is where I find myself now. And not with just one piece of fiction…with all pieces of fiction. It is, to put it bluntly, The Suck. Yes, capital T, capital S. It’s that bad. Ten pieces of something, a general idea of where each of them are going and I hit a block where I can’t figure out what to do with a single plotline…blech.

The last time this happened, I bought a beta (the fish, not the fanfiction equivalent of an editor). I called him Gil and appointed him with the task of keeping me inspired to move forward in my writing. His tank sat on the top shelf of my computer desk. He would float lazily in his distilled water habitat, complete with blue and opaque glass stones and he would stare at me as I tapped contemplatively at the keyboard and willed something amazing to happen. At times, it seemed to work – though when I think of it now, it was probably just a mental thing, kind of like giving a person an ineffective pill and telling them it would cure all muscle aches. They think it will, therefore it does, even though there is nothing in this pill that will do anything aside from leave an undesirable aftertaste.

Now, I have become convinced that it will be the purchase of a new chair that will provide me with the setting I need to “make the magic happen”, so to speak. So I have started my search for the perfect, overstuffed, sink-into-it-and-never-want-to-get-out chair that will cure this dreaded curse. I’ll let you know how that pans out. I’ve found a candidate, though I’m still keeping my eyes open for a chair that will scream “write in me!! I was made to inspire you!!” I have high expectations of furniture.

When I have it…I’m looking forward to finishing a piece of work that was started the week prior to my marriage, nearly six years ago. In the realm of fanfiction writing, people would refer to this piece as gift-fic. Simply put, a gift-fic is a piece of fiction written as a present to an individual or several individuals. In my case, this piece was created for three women who have been a significant part of my life.  To be stalled out on it now…when I’m so close to being done with it, all near 450 pages of it (so far) is, again, The Suck.

I keep thinking that part of me is just afraid to finish it, that when it is finished, I’ll have to start taking my writing seriously and dive head-long into the few pieces of possibly publishable fiction that I have already started. And that…is a terrifying though. Another part of me knows it’s just the curse of the Writers Block and the only thing I can do is sit back and wait it out while praying that my muse will return with a vengeance.

The Art of Blogging...kind of.

As I take yet another step into the attempts at blogging I find myself wondering...is there a way to do this? Is there a certain thing one must do when blogging? Do you pick a topic and run with it? Do you stay within a general theme, do you have a goal or a purpose that motivates you to delve into the world of technology and tread the boundaries of what is and what isn't something you may want the entire world knowing about you? Or do you just go and hope that somewhere along the line someone will think that you have something interesting to say and decide that you, as a blogger, are worth following, worth investing time in...worth noticing? What is the art of blogging?

I have friends who do it for the sole purpose of sharing a life that's been lived, a fear that's been conquered or is in the process of being conquered. My mother blogs to share information on their endeavor into the land of being entrepreneurs - to allow customers and potential customers to see the progress of their gardens and what new offerings will be provided as the season pushes forward. The movie Julia and Julia...she blogged to share her adventure in completing the culinary works of Julia Childes.

Maybe the question isn't 'what is the art of blogging' but 'What is the individuals concept of blogging'?
Sounds a bit more accurate, doesn't it?

Whatever the answer is, I hope to find it along the way.

"Your mind can set you free. To reach your own paradise just let go." ~Sucker Punch