Time to read

I pile the stack of books on the counter with a thud and smile at the librarian as I hand her my library card.

“No kids today?” She asks.

“No. Just me.” I say.

“Now, I have to ask you,” she says, in her rich European accent, “you have the three little boys, yes?”

“Yes.” I won’t pass this comment on to the noisy boys, who are ten and would take great offense at being called little.

“My dear,” she asks as she scans Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, “when you do have time to read all of these?”

Good question. When do I have time to read? I mumble something about after the kids go to bed, but I think of it throughout the evening. The simple answer is that I prefer a good book to just about anything on television, but the truth is: I can’t not read. Words are part of who I am. And who I’m becoming.

How do I have time to read?

How do I not have time?

awkward silence

I’ve been quiet for so long on this blog, it feels strange to say anything at all.

Hey. It’s me. I’m still alive over here, busily raising three boys and wearing any number of other hats: writer, friend, editor, wife, mother, cook, housekeeper. Should I keep going?

But you’re busy too, no doubt. Everyone I meet seems to have a couple of lives going.

I’ve been thinking about this space and how I want to fill it, or even, if I should fill it. I still don’t have any concrete answers, but I’m breaking the silence anyway. I’m not going to try to find my writing identity with this blog, instead, I’m just going to keep doing what I love to do: tell stories.

Yesterday, my Kindergartener (can you believe my baby is 5?) asked me a deep theological question on the way home from school: “Mom, why did God even make such a thing as barf?”

So, yeah. Marketing be damned. (I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say that word on this here, but there it is. If I disappear, you’ll know why.) You can expect the same high quality material you’ve come to expect from the Llama Momma. Because that’s the way I roll.

Us and Them

I don’t like to think of myself as a person with prejudices. I don’t think many of us do, and yet lately I’ve been struck by how often I put people in “boxes” and label them without even knowing them.

Boxes like:
unChristian
Homeschooler
Working mom
Uneducated

The list goes on. Your list may look different than mine, but we all have them. Maybe you classify people based on race or gender or socioeconomic status. And as much as we know that these labels are not helpful, and certainly not the way Jesus rolls, we do it—many times unconsciously. Becoming aware of it is often the first stop toward changing. (And now I’ll stop being all Dr. Philish. I promise.)

I’ve recently jumped categories. From stay-at-home mom to part-time working mom. I took a part-time job at a Music and Art Academy working a few evenings a week and the occasional Saturday. And I love it.

I’ve been working from home for awhile now, but I love actually GOING to work. Leaving my house and looking nice and talking to real live people. Not to mention starting a project and finishing it from beginning to end with very little interruption. It’s a beautiful thing.

And with the boys back in school, I’m aware of the other big label—especially in the Christian community: public school mom versus homeschool mom.

How many times have I sat in a circle of well-intentioned women and heard someone make an off-hand comment, “Well, it’s a sacrifice, but I just love Johnny so much, I COULDN’T send him to public school!” And as a public school mom, I’m sitting there thinking about how much I LOVE my kids and am doing what I believe is best for them. Did that homeschooling mom intend to slam me? Probably not. But in our judgment of the “other” we unintentionally hurt one another.

So, Moms. Can we try to lose the labels? Can we all work together and trust that we’re all doing what we feel is best for our kids? After all, we all have the same goal: to raise healthy, happy kids who are productive members of society.

disappointment

How do you deal with disappointment? I have to confess, my first reaction is usually to pull the covers over my head and just hide. Or eat chocolate. Or both.

As many of you know, my husband, Llama Papa, has been looking for a job since last fall. He’s had some great leads and some great interviews, but no offers. Yesterday, he found out he didn’t get a job he really wanted.

Which sucks.

Financially, we’re in good shape. God has been abundantly gracious to us, which we’re beyond grateful for. But still. It’s disappointing to not be able to find a job.

Beyond disappointing.

So if you think of us, say a prayer that the right job would come along for one of us. And if you’re looking for a great IT guy or a snarky writer, drop me a line.

naked and unashamed

According to my husband, a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast can fix just about anything. Well, not really, but it can give a person the needed perspective to simply deal with what is.

After a great night’s sleep in my quiet hotel room and a hot breakfast prepared by someone else, I enjoy a leisurely morning of writing, reading and email.

Then as I get ready to climb into the shower, I glance at my reflection in the mirror. (For the record, there are good reasons I don’t have a very large mirror in my bathroom.) As I climb into the shower, I begin to beat myself up. You really need to tone up that flab, lose some weight. And where did those wrinkles around your eyes come from? Is there cream for that? You should pay more attention to these things.

And then I hear myself and stop. Because, really, why do I need to beat myself up when I’m on a desperately needed getaway? What does God want for me today? Surely He’s not looking down at me thinking, “Wow. She’d be great if only she’d drop a few pounds and work out more.”

How can I see myself the way God sees me? Can I see the woman in the mirror, in need of rest, and just curl up and take a nap? Can I see the wrinkles around my eyes with gratitude, for the years and laughter He’s blessed me with? Can I see my chipped nails and chapped hands and acknowledge my own hard work caring for my family each day? Can I look at a body that has had the privilege of hosting life, and respect myself for that sacrifice? Can I see a woman who nurtures her children day in and day out, remembering all that I do, not all that I don’t do?

I stand in the shower and let the water wash over me. I remember grace, and breathe a prayer of thanks. Yes. Grace. It’s the only way I can stand before God. The only way any of us can stand.

How does God see you today? How do you see yourself?

balance

Anyone know where to find it?

Between three kids, a husband engaged in a job search, writing a novel, and trying to be a halfway decent friend to the people who hang with me in real life, (Hi Dianne! Hi Dana!) I can't seem to keep up with my blog.

I'm still writing, though. I'm working my way through the young adult novel I wrote in November, and joined a critique group to help with the editing process. I officially hate my novel now, but everyone else seems to think it has potential, so I'm sticking with it.

Like everyone else in the Midwest, I'm tired of winter and ready for spring. We're expecting another big snow this weekend, so a few more trips down the sled hill are definitely on the agenda.

And hot chocolate. That's on the agenda too.

I take it back

Wait.

Who was that upbeat woman who posted yesterday and said she was enjoying winter in Chicagoland?

Doesn't she realize it's -20 degrees outside?

Um. Yeah. Everything I said yesterday? I take it back.

I'm cold, people.

enjoying winter

It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Enjoying. Winter.

Yesterday I was walking the noisy boys to school, pushing the toddler’s turbo jogging stroller through a snow drift, and I had a sudden realization: I don’t hate this. In fact, I kind of enjoy bundling up and walking to school every day.

I’m a California girl at heart, and let me tell you, I hate being cold. I used to wear a coat in fifty-degree weather and stay in because it was, well, raining.

The first few years after moving from the Bay Area of California to the tundra that is the Chicago suberbs, I used to regularly think, “Why did we come here?” It was just so cold, and the memory of California’s sunshine was still too fresh.

Now I walk my kids to school when it’s three degrees.

And I like it.

Who would have thought?

day 17

Thirteen days until the end of NaNoWriMo. The writing is going well. I’m in a groove and just bumped my word count up over 35,000. At this point, I’m more afraid of finishing than not finishing.

(I know. Bizarre, isn’t it? This fear of success? One more thing to add to my list of Things to Bring Up in Therapy.)

What have I learned on this journey so far?

--At least half of doing something is simply believing you CAN do it.

--4:30 a.m. is really early.

--The Crock Pot is my friend.

--I cannot do it all. I just can’t. Letting go of certain things I think I should do enables me to do the things I really want to do. (And you know what? The earth doesn’t self destruct when I say “no.”)

--My husband is amazing. Still.

Thanks for following my progress! (And being patient while I totally neglect this blog...)

week one

Well, I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo for exactly one week now. My word count hovers at just over 16,000 words.

I vacillate between loving my novel and hating it. One minute I think it’s great, and the next minute, I want to chuck it in the trash and start over with new, more interesting characters.

But I’m persevering.

And learning a bit about myself too.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

--I’m very competitive. I hate it when my “writing buddies” get too far ahead of me on the their word count, which compels me to write more. (Keep writing, Musing Mom! You’re a huge motivator for me.)

--I love chocolate. Having NaNoWriMo right after Halloween just seems cruel. Or wonderful. It all depends on how you look at it!

--I write more when I’m busy. On days when I only have an hour-and-a-half to write, I have no problem whipping out the word count. Give me three, and I’ll struggle. (Word Challenge is of the devil.)

--My husband is amazing. Seriously. His willingness to sacrifice his own time for me to do something I’ve always wanted to do makes me fall in love with him all over again.

That’s all for now. Back to Megan, my fifteen-year-old unreliable narrator who has gotten herself into quite a pickle. Oooh. Pickles sound good. Or maybe a twix bar. (Anyone want to join weight watchers with me in December?)

my inner critic

I roll over and squint at the clock perched on my nightstand. 4:32 a.m. A voice in my head tells me I’m crazy to get up this early. It’s cold. And dark. Besides, I’ll never finish a novel in a month, no matter how early I get up. Who am I kidding? And what if I do finish? It will probably be crap.

But I get out of bed anyway. I tell the voice in my head to shut up and I turn on the coffee pot and sit down at my laptop to read the last few pages of what I wrote yesterday. Some of is pretty crappy, but not all of it. I resist the urge to delete it all and just pick up where I left off.

My confidence level grows with each word, and after my hour-long writing session this morning, I’m at just over 7,000 words.

I can do this.

Which makes me wonder, what else could I do if I simply ignored that voice in my head? The one that says I’m not good enough? Not smart enough? Not deserving enough?

NaNoWriMo

I know. I’m crazy. But I’ve wanted to do this since I first heard about it and at the last minute, decided, “Oh, why not?”

November is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m joining thousands of other crazy writers around the world and writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. (It works out to 1667 words a day, not that I’m counting or anything.)

So far it’s going really well. I got up at 5, managed to avoid getting sucked into facebook (no, I do not want to be your friend), and wrote like the wind for fifteen minutes. 137 words down, only 49,873 to go.

And then my toddler woke up. Way too early. So I’ve been rocking him for the last thirty minutes, and now I’m listening to him yell into the monitor, “Mama! Up! Funny Show!” (He loves America’s Funniest Home Videos.)

So there you go. Day one and I’m off and running, in my own unique way.

stating the obvious

I’ve been quiet lately on this blog, yet strangely unsure of how to break the silence.

It’s not that I don’t have things to say. I do. I just don’t know how to say them, or even if I should say them.

So I’ve been quiet.

Plus I had an article published recently on the MOPS website that’s been sending me a ton of traffic. And, you know, the best thing to do when your blog is getting lots of traffic is to not write anything. Otherwise, people might like your blog and come back and visit again, and before you know it, actual people are reading your blog. Yup. Much better to just stop writing anything at all.

It’s like the balloon thing all over again.

couch dresses

I went shopping last night. For a dress to wear to a wedding.

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you already know that I hate shopping. (Remember the tube top incident?)

(For the record, I learned my lesson with the tube top thing. If you have to pull and tug to get it ON, don’t go there. You’ll never get it off again.)

I tried to go in with a positive attitude. I just need a reasonably attractive dress appropriate for an evening wedding. That shouldn’t be too hard to find, right? After all, people go to weddings all the time. Clothed.

True. But what do they wear? And—more importantly—where did they buy it?

Because, let me tell you, there were not a lot of options. Unless you count all of the dresses made out of upholstery fabric. I am not making this up. There were hundreds of dresses on the racks that looked (and felt) like couches, or worse, carpeting.

Who wears these dresses?

(I did find one, by the way. Macys. They had their share of couch dresses too, but they also had relatively normal looking dresses. And they were having a sale. So there you go.)

monotony

I’m bored.

(Can I just say that out loud and get it over with?)

I’m dreading this week, not because there’s anything special going on, but because this week looks a lot like last week, which looks a lot like the week before that.

I get up, drink coffee, pack lunches, make breakfast, walk the kids to school, clean up, entertain the toddler, clean up some more, fix more food, throw in a load of laundry, and on and on it goes,

It’s not like I don’t see the importance of it all, I do. That’s why I’m doing it. But honestly? I’m bored.

I changed my mind

Remember in that last post when I said you should pray for Llama Papa and not worry about me, I’ll be happy just to be in my lovely hotel room not changing diapers or making beds or cooking meals?

Well, I changed my mind.

Pray for me, friends. This writing stuff is intense, and I am in way over my head. Seriously. The other people in my workshop are college professors and People Who have Published Several Novels. And then there’s me: a stay-at-home Mom from Chicagoland who can change a diaper really fast and publishes stories in magazines that nobody reads.

I think I need a candy bar. Or a drink. Not necessarily in that order.

University of Iowa

I’ve been doing it for awhile now, I just haven’t mentioned it. Once you mention it, people ask about it. And then, suddenly, it’s a thing of stress. So…shhh. Pretend I didn’t say this out loud: I’ve been writing fiction. (Or trying to write fiction.)

And I like it.

Quite a few months ago I signed up for a week-long fiction writing workshop at the University of Iowa. Up until two weeks ago, I didn’t know if the workshop would be cancelled or not, due to flooding. (It seemed tacky to call during a state of emergency: “Um, hi. Sorry you lost your house and everything, but what about my class?”)



I had to scramble to find a new hotel since the one I had booked is closed until August, but classes are on.

And while I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing all week, I know what I won’t be doing: laundry, cooking, childcare, driving children around to birthday parties and playdates, keeping a two-year old safe at the swimming pool, sweeping the floor, cleaning the bathroom, or even, not that I actually do this every day, making my bed.

I was going to ask you to pray for me while I’m away, but maybe your prayers should be directed to Llama Papa instead. Have I mentioned here before what a great guy he is? He is. Great.

help

Why is it so hard to accept help?

I was just at the grocery store with baby b. Unlike me, he loves to shop. The grocery store we go to has a fun “car cart” that he drives, beeping and vrooming at people as we go.

The only problem with the car cart is you’re not supposed to take it outside. When the noisy boys were small, this was a serious issue. With just one toddler, though, it’s not usually a big deal. The checker puts the bagged groceries in a normal cart, I plop the baby in that seat, and off we go.

But today the checker put the groceries in the cart without unfolding the seat first, so there was no place for baby b. to sit. I didn’t want to make a fuss, so I just left. First I tried carrying baby b. and pushing the cart with one hand. Kind of tricky. Next, I tried holding baby b’s hand while he walked, pushing the cart a little bit at a time. It was ridiculous how complicated it was just getting to my minivan.

Two women stopped me on their way out and asked, “Do you need help?” It’s like I’ve got a built in “no” reflex or something because without really thinking about it, I just waved them on by. “No thanks! I’ve got it!”

But I didn’t have it. I really needed a hand.

Does anyone else do this or is it just me?

messes

It started with a cake plate.

We had our small group over for a bbq and I made a lemonade cake and put it on my fancy pedestal cake platter, which is stored on a shelf in the basement. The next day the cake was gone, the plate was clean, but I was too busy to take it downstairs just then. So onto the table it went.

“Mom! Can you get this away from baby b.? He’s ruining it,” added more than a few art projects to the pile. I always mean to put things away, but when naptime rolls around, there’s always something else that urgently needs my attention—dishes on the kitchen counter, laundry to fold, or two big boys who need some quiet time with Mom. And so the mess just sits there, growing a little bit every day.

Now when I look at it, I’m overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.

Kind of like my life. Messes have piled up in the corners of my heart, waiting for life to slow down enough to sort through it all. And now there’s such a huge pile, I don’t know where to start.

Though I suppose it doesn’t really matter where I start. I just need to start.

more stuff about me

Several weeks ago, LL Barkat tagged me over on her Green Inventions Central blog. Then on Monday, my friend 23 Degrees tagged me with the same meme.

It’s meant to be.

So here you go: six random things about me.

1. Coffee is not optional. In fact, when I was in the hospital with my gall bladder, I had to wait until the next day to have surgery. (The surgeon was busy watching some sporting event.) So I spent the whole next day fasting, waiting for the surgeon, and ended up on narcotics for a killer caffeine headache.

2. The day before my gall bladder attack, I went to a Tastefully Simple party at a friend’s house. I never ate any of the items that I bought. In fact, they sat in a box for seven or eight months before I finally opened it and gave them all away. I just couldn’t face the beer bread.

3. I love school supplies. New pencils, notebooks and markers give me a thrill. I always loved fall, going back to school, and new school supplies give me this same feeling of a fresh start.

4. I have no sense of direction. Seriously. If you tell me to turn south at the light, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

5. I don’t cry very often, but when I do it’s often inappropriate. I can sit across from a friend and listen to the horrific story of some injustice done to her and never flinch. But take me to the zoo with a group of happy kids, and I will weep. I know. I need therapy.

6. I’m stopping at five things, cause I’m a rebel that way. Which is actually the sixth thing. Sort of.

If you don’t want to play, that’s fine, but I tag a Musing Mom, Marmot Mom, FrazzMom, Mama of a whole lot of Drama, Mommy Cracked, and just to prove that I don’t JUST read blogs with MOM in the title, Linda.