The Library a lovely summer thing.

I had a sweet nostalgic feeling today as I took my four youngest children to the library. We have been there a number of times this summer mostly on rainy days. I remember going to the library as a little girl. Along with taking out books to read and looking forward to that new adventure, there were always little activities, and reading groups to take part in.

Today my children asked me to go to the library. I remember the first couple of times that I took them.They were complaining about it, saying it was boring, and why couldn't we go to the mall for date night. Now they view it like I do. It is an adventure.

Sure we could go to the book store and purchase books, which we do about 4 times a year. It is just not the same experience. The book store trips have a build up of excitement like Christmas, you know you are going soon, and you think long and hard about what you want to buy, and how to get the best bang for your buck.

The library has all kinds of excitement. The last time we went, the girls learned how to put a book on hold if it was not in at the time. They get excited when they finish a book before the due date, and if they don't finish it they get excited to go online and renew it. They love looking up a book to see if it is in. It is the whole experience that makes this simple trip so grand. The joy of finishing a book and knowing that you can go and take the next one in the series out is great. The anticipation of starting a book once you get home is like a mini gift.

Then there is that sense of community that you get from seeing the librarians over and over again, and seeing other people from your community that you may bump into at the grocery store, or at the bank. Children's reading groups are great, they see the same children week after week and enjoy sharing stories and learning life lessons. The kids do crafts together usually based on a theme of a popular book.

How lovely it is to enjoy a summers day reading. Enjoying a cool glass of lemonade under your favorite shade tree, snuggling with the kiddies to read a lazy afternoon story. The library encourages one of the great summer activities that can be done again and again with your kiddies. 

Glorious days of Summer.

Well another day came and went without me getting much done in the way of completing my life's works. But, it will never be said that I didn't spend enough time with my children.

I got up this morning and had breakfast with my 19 year old Daughter M. Hubby P. and baby A, and then I was off to Toronto with A, and M followed in her own car because she had stuff to do later. We ended up Meeting my oldest R and granddaughter M. and all of us went to the beach for the day.

What a great day. I watched my two oldest girls play with the babies in the lake and play with sand, and I kept my eye on the babies, while the two adult girls, had a water fight. I have always wanted hoped and prayed that as my children got older that they would be friends. I see it in the older girls now, there was a period during their teen years that I thought they would not like each other later in life. I think as they went through their various hormonal changes they hated each other and could view each others faults so clearly. But at the same time, they went through their individual rough patches and life lessons that teens run into, with dating and backstabbing friends, hard teachers and tough coaches, they were there for each other.

They always took care of each other outside our home. No one could badmouth or harass one of them with out hearing from the other. That was the only thing that kept me from breaking down in tears every time they fought in our home.

As I watch the rest of them grow up, it gets easier to step back from their squabbles, and allow them to have their differences and angry moments. Because now, having the experience of the oldest two girls, I know that eventually we will all be having tea together, and cleaning  a kitchen after a big thanksgiving dinner.

I am so glad that I can procrastinate about some things and take the time to  enjoy the important things, like sitting on the beach drinking a carafe of tea, with my girls.

Euphoria

I had a day planned last week. It was one of those days that I thought I would not have much choice in. My seven year old S. had an appointment at the orthodontist to put an expander in. His orthodontist is in east Toronto I live in Burlington. So I made the appointment as early in the day as I could and called my oldest daughter R. who also lives in Toronto hoping she would have the day free and I could take the kids and meet R. and granddaughter M. at the beach.

As it turns out she had nothing planned so on Friday morning, I made sandwiches, cut up some fruit and packed the cooler. Off we went.

I was on the highway driving and the kids all 4 of them in the back of the van were in a great groove, playing and talking quietly, I had said a pleasant goodbye to hubby before I left, and I felt pretty good.

All of a sudden my heart started pounding, I felt a little shaky and wasn't sure what was happening. It was a feeling that I usually associate with anxiety, when there is a lot of cleaning hanging over my head, or a task at work that has not been completed, or when there is a month with an unusual amount of bills. As the feeling settled and came and went it was quickly replaced with a warm glowing feeling inside, rather than the normal scanning of everything in my brain to figure out what was causing the anxiety. I realized it was not anxiety but euphoria, an exuberance for my situation in life at this moment.

It was a wonderful, fantastic, and rare feeling, I almost burst into tears. I was in love, had all my work done, my home was in good shape, my children were happy and I had nothing to worry about! How odd; but wonderful.

I sent hubby a text telling him how much I loved him, and how I was feeling. I was almost overwhelmed, I turned and looked at the kids in the back seat and told them how wonderful they were.

When we set up on the beach, sitting there with my oldest daughter, I tried to explain to her this feeling and how happy I was with life in general. I really wanted to share it with her, I was loving the water and the sand and the sun and the wind. It was so fantastic. It has taken me so long in life to get to a point where my happiness is a general everyday feeling, and where I have spiritual moments when if feels like God is tapping me on the shoulder and saying, "glad to see you are finally enjoying what I have made for you."

That physical feeling that I often associate with stress and anxiety will never mean the same thing again. I think I had a wake up call this summer. A spiritual dipping in life. I am finding peace and serenity, not in meditation and quiet and loneliness, but in my family and sharing happiness with them.

It has been a fantastic summer of small adventures and moments of laughter and happiness, probably not much different from other summers. For some reason, my mind and heart have opened up to the experiences and I am taking from them, not just creating them for other people, but participating and living the happiness that I want for all of my loved ones.

I wish I could bottle it and teach it. I know so many moms who get caught up in day to day chores, and things that have to be done, they plug along achieving everything that needs to be done, and doing everything in their power to make everyone around them happy.

I have done that and more, because I am able to feel it and enjoy, I don't need to stand back and take a look at how everyone is doing. I know they are well and doing fine, because so am I.

Flight of Fancy

I know it has been ages since I have written, but summers days are long, and my family gets every second I can give them. Today, fortunately for my neglected writing, it is too hot to play outside. Big sis is here to spend time with baby. The lawnmower blades are tangled in rope, meaning I can't cut anymore grass and the weed whacker is out of gas. In light of the beautiful sight I have been seeing in out drive way for the last two weeks I have to do some writing any way.

If you happen to be visiting me in the next few weeks, do take your time coming down my drive way. If you take it slow and look, (really look), out the windows you will notice there are between 50 and 100 little yellow butterflies fluttering around. When you get close to them they funnel up towards the sky like a little tornado of buttercups.

It reminded me of my obsession with fairies when I was younger, every chance I could (which was not often because I was never on my own), I would hunt for faeries. I usually used my time at my Aunt Burt and Uncle Don's farms for hunting. My Uncle Don would warn me about various dangers,
 "stay away from the creek, don't bother the geese, don't eat any berries."
I would wander off for what felt like hours to me, but the solitary hunts never produced a faerie.

It was healthy though, what it did produce was imagination, I would look under bushes and rocks by the shaded mossy creek edge, and under a little bridge that went over the creek, ( I always expected to at least find a troll under the bridge). I always thought that I was looking at a place that a faerie had just been. A toadstool that had a dark spot on it would have been where a faerie had just been sitting, and bruised it when it ran off in haste. Little berries I would find around a bush would have been the leftovers of a faerie picnic at the edge of the meadow. I would find loose moss and think it was a faerie bed, or see a leaf fall into the creek out of the corner of my eye, and I would think I had just seen the slightest splash of a faerie who just dove into the water.

I remember once my Aunt Burt and I were having a picnic on the front lawn under a willow, and while I looked up thinking of how much fun fairies could have in a willow tree, an inch worm worked its way down its little silk thread.

My Aunt Burt laughed at my face and said, "don't worry it won't hurt you, it is spinning silk for the fairies, they need something warmer in the winter than leaves and flower hats."

The only thought in my mind at that moment was that there must be fairies if Aunt Burt said so. She was a severe woman, all prim and proper all the time. There was never a reason or excuse to relax the rules or put aside impeccable manners. So if she said so then I just hadn't found them yet.

That same day the sheep got out and wandered past the house and up the drive way. My Uncle was in town at the time, and my Aunt Burt and I went out and rounded them up (she did most of the work with the dog and the crook). I stood on the bottom rung of the gate swinging it open and shut for each sheep that came back. Latter that evening during our dinner of bread and butter, bologna and eggs (which was an awesome dinner to me), the conversation revolved around the suspect who left the gate open, all fingers pointed to fairies. Once again I pondered their existence as a fact while I ate my nice soft bread and butter.

I spent so many nights under my covers reading the children's book of poems I had, I studied The Fairies , I was certain that somewhere in that text I would find out where to find a faerie.

As I got older real life gave way to my fantasies, and where once I used to sit on the bottom of a swimming pool with a training brick to have faerie tea parties, I slowly forgot fairies, imagination gave way to training, hard work and focusing on goals.

As a teenager I had my first child, and I wanted so very much to keep her a little girl for as long as I could, but I almost couldn't remember how. With all the worry I had, and my mind whirling about her future, I was almost stuck and couldn't remember play. Until one day I couldn't find her soother, my Grandfather was there, he was sitting in a chair reading the newspaper. I was stomping around the house looking for the soother, obsessed with finding it and quickly so that I could go to bed myself. My Grandfather mumbled something barely audible over my complaining and stomping.

"Pardon?" I said.

"Its fairies," he said,"they are playing with you, must not be enough play in your life."

When my grandfather was being mischievous he got a twinkle in his eye, and a look of such delight on his face, I am not sure that he wasn't a faerie. What could I do but laugh at his suggestion. We ended up having a lovely talk about fairies. His central theme in the conversation was about love and life, enjoying what you have and not fretting about what you don't have. It was about childhood being a state of mind and not an age. It was about me growing up and being disappointed that with knowledge comes the loss of fantasy, magic and pretend. It was his way of telling me that responsibility was not a sentence to never imagine or play again, quite the contrary. Responsibility dictates, that imagination, fancy, pretend, kings, queens, castles and fairies, must be kept quite alive, and they are all very intact and it was my obligation to pass this on.

My grandfather was the last person to ever confirm my belief in fairies, and it is time for me to pass that on to my children and grandchildren.

I want them all to see the yellow butterflies, because I am pretty sure that the butterflies are just transportation for fairies, and I am sure that they are somewhere near by. We have a conservation area near by also, and I am sure if we go as a family for a hike, I can point out a ton of places to the kids where there was just a faerie, maybe just a second ago.

Here is an excerpt from that Poem, click on the excerpt to view the whole poem.

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We Daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all Together;
Green jacket, red cap,
 and white owl's feather.

The Parade!

The Parade of phone calls, kisses,birthday wishes and gifts, started on Friday evening and continued until Sunday night.

Every single gift and wish was so appreciated, but as the parade of gifts kept coming I found myself thinking, "What did I do to deserve such a life, such family, such love."

I think about my career as a mom, and I think of all the arguments, and the short fuses, the bad temper, the scoldings. I think about how many times I have looked at one of my eight children and chastised them only to get a true look of humility, and remorse, and a certain sadness at having dissapointed me.

My family is truly great! Love is what has been parading through my home and life in the last three days. I feel like a very undeserving recipient of all the glory that these children have written when signing the birthday cards, I can't help but feel I have let them down somehow, when I read all of their little musings about my skills as a mother.

It is really overwhelming to think with all of my mistakes and all of the trouble that my kids have to put up with  because of how long it takes to really learn how to parent,(and I am still learning) they still dig down deep, and come up with something nice to say.

A true testimony of how great they each individually really are. Kind hearted loving little, big, growing, changing, human beings. How fabulous, I will cherish the fact that a birthday of mine brings out the greatness and creativity of my flock, my family.

I wake up every morning praying to be a better mom than I was yesterday. I hope in some way here and there it makes a difference, because in-spite of, not because of, my mothering skills I have eight children I am very proud of, and who I know will be able to achieve all that I have not been able to thus far.

Why I'm Me! Right?

Who do we all want to be?

When I was a little girl, whenever I was having a hard time, you know those times as a kid when you were being punished and hated your parents, I would fantasize. I would daydream about the kind of person that I wanted to be.

I wouldn't think about my life though, or how I would live it. Funny enough I would daydream about what other people would think of me. What would people say about me. I would fantasize that people would say, what a good mom! What a humanitarian! What a kind, loving, wonderful, caring, sweet, graceful... well you get the picture.

When I was a little girl I guess I was messed up or something, to view my future, and choose my future according to what other people would think. Funny enough in a way I still, make choices and base decisions, on what I think, other people will think.

I sometimes fantasize about what my children think about me, I think about what my friends think about me, and it is truly silly. We have all done that thing where we are faced with a decision and you think about what someone in your life would do if faced with the same choice; and then you choose the exact opposite. You think to yourself, I don't want to be like my Mom, or my Dad, or I remember old Aunt Bertha and I don't want to be like her. So you base your decisions on who you don't want to be rather than who it is you do want to be.

I have been thinking a lot about that in the last year or so. Seriously I want to be me. I don't always know who that is because I spend so much time focusing on who I don't want to be.

I don't want to be a loud, manipulative, guilt pushing mom. I don't want to be a nagging, tired, plaintive, hard-done-by wife. I don't want to be a loud, flippant employee. I know who I want to be and feel like I am nothing like that, so I think the next best thing is to just focus on not being all of the undesirable things.

I am missing though, there is so much missing. People don't get to know me. People don't ever get to make their own judgments about who I really am, because I don't present it. I give them what I think is the least disagreeable rather than just giving them me, and trusting, that maybe I am who I want to be, when I am not working so hard, to not be, those things which I detest.

 I have just come to realize that when I am sitting on the couch, pooped in the evening, and belching because I just wolfed down a huge bowl of cereal as a bedtime snack, scratching my butt every once in a while, it doesn't negate the wonderful things that really make me who I am.

When I kiss my kiddies at night, and think of the ones who are not with me everyday, and get teary eyed, that does not negate the strength I have, and I hope, I have taught to my children.

When I get angry at the world because I can't figure out how to get my printer to work, I am not evil, I am frustrated, and that doesn't negate the fact that I am concerned with the world. Or that I do help make it a better place. I try very hard to make a difference.

I am going to let the little things slide, I will just be who I am. I think the rest will come. I don't need to fantasize about what people think of me, or what they say about me.

I just need to be.

Ahhh Friend or Foe?

So my old friend, or my old enemy is back once again. Nope not my period, not a headache, not a person. It is procrastination. The very reason I started this blog. I just realized how long it has been since I posted a blog, crazy.

Its not that I have not been writing because I do that pretty much every day. I have my little note book that I write things down in as I go about my day. The purpose of the little note book is to take a half hour at the end of my day to sit down go through the notes and blog.

Unfortunately when your life gets crazy you don't even prioritize and choose what you want to do, at least I don't. When my life gets crazy, I just tend to what ever is making the most noise. The kids, the hubby, the bills, of course personal grooming gets a bit of time too, although that is really getting pushed to the chopping block too. Sometimes it is bedtime before I remember I haven't brushed my teeth yet. I remember plenty of times to do  it throughout the day, it just so happens that I remember when I am out and about to talk to someone up close, rather than when I am in the house near my toothbrush.

I actually try to get into the bathroom to freshen up in the morning before I eat, I splash some water on my face and run a brush through my hair, wash the important bits up, and I hold off on the tooth brushing until I am finished eating. Then I get sidetracked by some job and forget to eat. You can see where I am going with this.

There are times when I don't have time for a shower, when a quick washing up will just have to do. There is always something else to do. I love having a shower in the evening because everyone is asleep and I don't hear babies crying on the other side of the door. The only problem with that is that I often can't blow dry my hair for fear of waking someone so I wake up with a muffin head. Then I have to try to find time in my day before I go out in public to re wet it and dry it straighten and style it.

Of course then there is the task of shaving, OK so I delve into a delicate subject, not for mixed company now. I DON'T CARE. Men hear this. Shaving ones legs and armpits is no where near as quick a task as shaving that tiny little bit of face. So to combat the amount of time it takes to shave my legs I have taken to measuring from the hem line of all my skirts, Capri's and shorts to my ankle, and when I choose my outfit for the day, I go into my shower with a tape measure, and that area from hem to ankle is what gets shaved.

I know for a fact I am not the only person who does this, in mom and tot classes everywhere if you were to slightly lift a hem, you would see the untamed forest of an unshaven mom. I am sure many women everywhere are saying, "so go get waxed". The problem with that is when life is laid back and easy, it is great to go get waxed, but when life is crazy, I already take three hours out of every two weeks to go get my eyebrows waxed and a manicure and pedicure. If I only have three hours every two weeks, I would much rather have a woman massaging my legs and taking care of my feet than a woman ripping hair out of an area of my body large enough to make 4 children a pair of pants each.

Wah Wah Wah! I know I am whining, I can't stand it when other people do it, but lets face it, it is funny. If I can make you laugh so be it, I will become the whining mommy.

I always hear people making fun of female comedy, "all they talk about is periods, not wanting sex, their husbands and their weight" but, that is half the population guys, women. We need a laugh too, we don't find things like the hillbilly up the street funny, we don't find farting funny, we don't think its hilarious when you do naked willy dances. We do though find comfort in each other, in trials, in successes. We find it hilarious when what we feared would make us different, actually is something that makes us all the same.

The biggest thing that most women have in common is their perceived lack of time.