Cupcake Dreams

I want to be a kid again.  I want to tell stories the way my youngest daughter does.  I want to dream about cupcakes.  And I really, really want a Dream Teller of my very own.

During dinner last night, Little T was devouring my homemade spaghetti sauce and making me feel like Martha Stewart, Julia Child, and Ree Drummond, all rolled into one, and she mentioned that she knew she was going to have a good dinner tonight because her Dream Teller told her so.

Come again, daughter?

Your what?

That's right.  She has a Dream Teller.  Every morning, after a night of dreaming about cupcakes and unicorns and whatever other lovelies visit her while she is sleeping, her Dream Teller tells her what her dreams mean.  Here's last night's:

Actually, I don't want to be a kid again: I want to be THIS KID.

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Don't Miss This Opportunity

Yesterday, I found out why I've been experiencing muscle pain and muscle fatigue for the past several months: turns out I have a pretty severe Vitamin D deficiency.  How delightful that my inability to move is not a character flaw!  How delightful is health insurance!  How delightful that, with Vitamin D supplements on board, my children might remember me for something besides collapsing on my pillows!  I am so looking forward to feeling better.

This discovery is a good reminder that we should listen to our bodies.  I've been ignoring my collection of symptoms for a long, long time, assuming that it was just a matter of not getting enough rest, or just because I'm getting older, or just not important enough to pay attention to.  I would never have ignored the ongoing, chronic aches and pains of one of my children; why was I willing to ignore my own?

Think about your own body: are you ignoring anything that you maybe should give a little credence to?  Anything worth asking a doctor about?  Anything worth feeling better for?  Don't miss this opportunity.

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Yesterday, I read a New Yorker essay by Roger Angell* that moved me to tears.  (Updated: The link will take you to full article; The New Yorker posted it in its entirety today.)  So much of my day is occupied by keeping up with my computer and responding to my smart phone that I think some of those tears were due to spending a few minutes with the slick, weighted pages of a good magazine, but most of them were because Angell's writing is exquisite.  His ability to weave back and forth between the personal and the universal is captivating.  I miss reading and I miss writers, and I can't wait to read more and more and more.  Why and how did I ever lose that habit?

Think about your nightstand: does it hold books and magazines you have been meaning to read? Are you making time for Downton and Duck Dynasty but putting off Didion, Diaz or Dos Passos?  Is there anything there worth spending time with?  Don't miss this opportunity.

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Yesterday, while I was ranting on Facebook about mistakenly buying cilantro instead of parsley and being severely disappointed that I couldn't make the dinner I was planning, a family in San Diego was mourning the loss of a 20 year old son, killed while skateboarding by a young drunk driver who fled the scene.  I heard about it, mere moments after my silly FB post, from a friend of mine who knows the family.

There aren't really words for losing a child.  It's too painful to imagine or express.  So many things are unimportant, so many daily annoyances and inconveniences distract us from what really matters.  I read the article about the family: there was a photo of 7 or 8 of them, gathered on the beach facing a makeshift memorial of balloons and flowers.  They stood in a group, shoulder to shoulder, leaning and holding on to each other, keeping each other upright in their grief.  One of them was missing.  One of the people who belonged there was not there, could not help with the holding.

Think about your family and friends: who belongs there?  Are any of them missing?  Can you go grab one and hold him up for awhile?  Can one of them do the same for you?  Do you need to leave aside minor annoyances and tell someone you love them?  Don't miss this opportunity.

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*Thank you Kelly Corrigan, for the Twitter recommendation for Angell's essay.

Then You Can Start To Make It Better

Happiness is...

...driving in the car listening to Hey Jude with my kids, thinking about how much I loved this song when I was a teenager, how much the music moved me and validated my every angst-filled thought, and about how back then, I never could have guessed that I would have these five little beings to call my own, all of whom know all the words to Hey Jude, who love it as much as I ever did, and about my own almost-teen, for whom this song is every bit as powerful and meaningful as it was for me when I was his age, and about how even today, in my less angst-filled but much more complicated world, the message is good and timely and such a blessing.

The movement I need is on my shoulder.

The movement to get up and make the coffee...

to make sure the laundry gets switched from washer to dryer...

to stop and admire my daughter's drawing of a mermaid under the sea...

to make tortilla soup...

to load everyone in the car and drive people to their destinations, to Shakespeare camp and soccer camp and Trader Joe's...

to make everyone do their chores...

to laugh at old Carol Burnett reruns...

to take a call from a friend who needs help drafting a letter to her boss, because her workplace is full of corruption and she wants to take a stand...

to wash the damn dishes...again...

to find shorts for the would-be 4 year old nudist...

to send a text to my husband with a photo of the latest kid creation I came across and to trade funny text messages with him...

to read The Thief Lord to the kids...

to let my daughter rest her head on my shoulder...

They are all here, ready for me to make the most of them, all of these movements, and the many, many more that will make up this day that seems impossible but probably isn't.

"Don't let me down. You have found her, now go and get her. Remember, to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better."

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Find her. Go get her. Let her in. Let her go. Watch her fly.

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Time for a Stretch

Thank you Viv for this award!

In return, I am charged with being grateful.

Wow.

Isn't that kind of antithetical to all the bitching and complaining I usually do?

Only some of it ends up on this blog, but the rest of my dissatisfaction with life is strewn liberally across my kitchen, where I spend so much of my time, and I'll have a job clearing it all to the side to find those gems of gratitude buried around here somewhere.

It is a well documented truth that the only motivation strong enough to make me clean my house is the threat of visitors. Now it seems the same is true of my head and heart: the only thing motivating me to clean them up today is the prospect of visitors to this blog. That plus the gauntlet thrown down by this Happy 101 Award.

So, thanks to Viv, I will now search my head and heart to find 10 things that I am grateful for, that make me happy. (I considered using spots 1-5 for each of my five kids. But that's a little bit of cheating right there, plus, they're driving me nuts, so it wouldn't have been incredibly heart felt. They are up too early, and they are clamoring for food, wii-time, and valentines print outs. The three little ones are giving me approximately -1 centimeter of space in which to move. Why is that the under 10 set does not understand the concept of personal space? Or perhaps they understand but do not care?)

OK, back to the task at hand. S-T-R-E-E-E-E-E-E-T-C-H!

1. I am grateful for my parents. They are really wonderful to my children and very supportive to Rick and me. They host sleepovers, take the kids to movies, do art with them, ride bicycles with them (bicycles they purchased!), and come to their sporting events. Plus, every year on my birthday, they renew my subscription to The New Yorker. Which is good because I spend so much time doing mind-numbingly mundane tasks that without a little high-brow content to read, I think my brain would have been mush a long, long time ago. Thanks for keeping me smart, mom and dad!

2. I am grateful for the very wide circle of friends Rick and I have. We have been showered with so many kindnesses, so much generosity, and so much plain old love, that no matter how stressful and difficult things may get while raising five children and working multiple jobs, I am forced to recognize that life is good, the world is full of beauty, and that people are truly wonderful. We are blessed.

3. I am grateful to the writers and actors of the show Friday Night Lights. They make me happy, after they rip my heart out with their story lines. What a great show.

4. I am grateful to the writer of the blog pantrymd.com. Check her out. She gave me the idea for kale chips, which my kids actually fight over. Kale. They can't get enough. That makes me incredibly happy, and gives me hope that these kids might just turn out to be successful, happy adults.

5. Coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

6. I am grateful for the internet, just like Viv, because it connects me to so many people and interesting ideas, and because I love to blog. Stay-at-home-parenting can be so isolating. The internet gives us that white picket fence of yesteryear -- a place to lean and chat with neighbors. (Thank you to my friend Gabriele for that image!)

7. I am grateful for the jobs Rick and I have. Work is a good thing, especially given that we are both self-employed.

8. I am grateful for hot showers, and I don't get nearly enough of them.

9. I am grateful for sour dough french bread.

10. I am grateful to Viv, for giving me this exercise to do. My mind and heart really needed the workout.

As for the passing it on part. Funny, I always enjoy getting these awards and the invitations to write about something, but I am entirely uncomfortable with sending them. So I guess I will instead invite everyone to consider what makes them happy and do a little posty-posting about it. Take the Happy 101 image from the top of this post, and join the party.

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