5 senses and my mother

See- I think first of her black as a raven hair, how shiny and beautiful it is. Then I think of her putting on her makeup, the way she holds her eye shadow brush is the same as how she holds her paintbrush, that she uses the same precise, flowing movement for creating as she does applying blush.

Smell- The smell of my mother, to me, is not the scent of her perfume, but rather, a crafty, arty sort of smell. A mix of paint, mineral oil, and fabric. When I'm in an art store, I feel a nostalgia for home, and for childhood.

Taste- Fresh tomatoes, hot from the sun, and fried okra, mmmm, the yummy goodness of food straight from the garden!

Touch- Her hug, the cure for what ails you! Her hand rubbing my back to get me to sleep.

Hear- When I think of my mother and music, I hear the symphony, Broadway; Celtic, and hymns.

Going on a what could be a long journey

This may be my last post for a while. I've been spending more and more time assessing my life, and all the areas of it. I've come to the conclusion that it's time to dedicate myself to looking within, and I'm not sure if I'm going to blog about it or not. One thing I feel is that I'm not very open on this blog. Not the way I would like to be. I often write posts, then delete them without ever posting them, mostly because they go the route of exposing myself, the way I think, write, view the world, and I'm afraid of the possible vulnerability of that. I feel rather shallow, and I don't want to be shallow, I want to be able to put myself on here without fear. Hhhmm, most people throw themselves onto the Internet without thought of how they will look, enjoying the anonymity, and here I am, cowering at my keyboard. I'm not shutting down this blog, but I'm not planning on frequent posts, either. I'm going to give myself until October 1. Yes, I'll be back posting regularly starting October 1. Autumn is my favorite season, I could start gushing about it now, but it gives me plenty to look forward to. I will leave it open to post if I'm feeling particularly motivated, but I'm not going to feel guilty about not posting. Who knows, I may just end up chronicling this time on here. We shall see!

So, how did the yard sale go?

It went well, thank you for asking. I had the yard sale for one reason-we had some big pieces of furniture to get rid of, and I didn't want to deal with making two or three trips to Goodwill. And, since I sold all but one of the big pieces, the yard sale was a roaring sucess, IMO. I didn't find out until I went to take the signs down that two of them were missing. Which is most likely why I had so few people on the second day. It's only annoying in the thought that someone probably took them down on purpose. In any case, I rummaged around the attic, garage, and house, and anything I found that I didn't want to keep, went out on the driveway. I did the simplest pricing possible, groups of items were marked with an all-around price-most everything was $1, or $5. It would have been nice to get some money for the DVD player and Playstation 2, but we had certainly gotten our money's worth from using them. At 6pm yesterday, I loaded up my car, and it is loaded, and after I shower today, we'll head to Goodwill. Then the natural foods store Nature's Pharmacy for veggies and fruit and teething cookies for Lex, then to Target. Maybe we'll stop by the Farmer's Market. Then home to puree some food for Lex, Nap for Eliz, and clean up a bit. Then I'll probably take Eliz over to my sisters, and I'll head over tot he hospital to see a new baby! Yay! My friends Matt and Hana had thier first child yesterday, and I'm so happy for them! The baby boy is Gavin David(great name) and only people that know Hana and Matt will know why this matters, but he has brown hair. Matt is a redhead, and most people were either seriously or teasingly wanting a redheaded baby. I guess I'll have to learn to live with dissappointment. So, a busy Saturday to go along with a busy week!

We're having a

Garage Sale. Yard Sale. Tag sale. A sale where all the stuff that's crammed into our house is going to be on the lawn or the driveway waiting for people to come and pay me to take it off my hands. So I don't have to walk around all the stuff. Or try to keep Lex from pulling things on top of himself. Or tell Eliz yet again, not to play with that. After going thru each room in the house, and removing anything we don't need, use or want, we have a lot of stuff sitting around. It's quite literally lining the walls. I was going to wait a couple of weeks to do the sale, but I can't take the clutter. Esp since having all this stuff around is just the opposite of what I wanted to achieve when I started this, which is create more space. Bry-D was saying just throw it on the sidewalk and hope it disappears, then we started talking prices on some of the stuff, and I think he's come around.

On a different note, I've gotten up early three or four days this week, while going to bed ealry or at the time I wanted to, and I must say, those were the best days of the week. Our schedule will be up in the air the next few weeks, as we'll be babysitting at my sisters house a few times each week and Tater Tamater will start preschool, and the days she's over will change. MOPs will be starting soon, and if we're going to do school this year, I've really got to get my butt in gear-we started off okay last year, and it just keep disintegrating as my pregnancy went on.

The more I read and study, the more I like the idea of a combination of Montessori and Waldorf. Perhaps because I'm both an artist's daughter, and the daughter of a mechanic; logic, order, discipline give me a sense of security, while simplicity, freedom, creativity give me a sense of peace. I think Eliz would do well with either, and since I am hard pressed to really choose between the two, I'm going to try for the middle ground. I've long wanted to have Eliz journal, which is part of Waldorf. Her curiosity for why and how we do things around the house is best satisfied by doing them herself-Practical Life of Montessori. She loves to paint, draw, sculpt, why not have her create things she's learning about-hello Waldorf! She adores puzzles, and much of Montessori is done with puzzles. Routine is paramount to me, and with Lex on a schedule that's trending towards 3-4 hour feeding, with stops for potty, play and naps, a "flow" rather than a "schedule" will probably work best. Add in some outside the house responsibilities, and a schedule sounds far to restricting.

I'll be spending this week pricing, sorting, and setting up. Sale dates are the 13th, 14th, and 15th of August(Thursday, Friday and Saturday) come on by-I may have something you need. Or want.

So, I'm neglecting my responsibilities

I started thinking after yesterday's post, is there really all that much going on? And the list got longer. For instance, Eliz was sick during our vaca, and the week following. Which, of course, lead to Lex getting sick. It was virus, and when Lex went to the Dr, he also had an ear infection. Then there's EC. We were doing really well, most days making it to the potty about 80% of the time. While on vaca, we were so all over the place, and Eliz being so sick(her fever got up to 102. 4) I didn't feel like EC was a priority. I used disposables on vaca, and by the time we got home it was about a week of him being in disposables. I felt like I was starting over with it, and he seemed unhappy with EC. When I would put him on the potty, he would arch his back, stiffen his legs and whine and cry. I switched to just letting him go in his cloth diaper for a few days, doing my best to use the signals when I saw him going. Then he started whining when he was wet-something he hadn't done since before vaca. I went a couple more days without putting him on the potty, using signals, and yesterday, I put him on the potty for the first time in about a week, and he went! Yay! Small success, but still, success! On the diaper note, I have to get some more cloths made, he's pretty much out grown the ones he has. Bry-D and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary by going to King's Island. We had a great time! Eliz went to Dance Day Camp, and Lex went to my friend Chel. If you go, make sure you ride the Firehawk, it's amazing! The newest ride is the Diamondback, which is extremely fast, and the seats are extremely comfortable, there aren't any loops or twists or turns, just alot of steep hills. Now, my husband doesn't like to spend money. He will be the first to tell you this, which is why I nearly fell over when he was fine with spending $25 on lunch-2 cheeseburgers with fries and one 32 oz reusable cup. True the burgers were the size of my head, and delicious, but still, he gave her two $20 and got $14 and some change back! We talked, laughed and enjoyed being together. We also questioned how that could be, after 10 years. I asked him about it and he agreed it was strange, b/c, as he put it, "You change your mind alot, and fast." Which is a nice way of saying I'm fickle. And it's true. It's just that something about this guy has staying power for me. Sigh. He's so beautiful. During the time spent at my parent's house for the 400, (am I changing subjects fast enough for you?!) my mother got out our "picture boxes". They are these shoe boxes that she's using to divide up all the pictures between us girls. I sorted through mine, in a desparate attempt to find a picture of myself that resembled one of my children, with no luck. There were alot of pictures with my sister Shell that really looked more like her daughter Casserole. Not just the features, but the mannerisms too. I have to accept the fact that I don't have children, I just incubate Bry-D's clones. At least they're cute, even if they don't look like me. So, that's enough of a break for me, time to get back to work!