Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Life. As simple as I want it.

My fans have requested a new post. Okay, it was only my sister, but she holds a lot of power over me so I caved in and will try to come up with something.

The truth is that my life is humming along a rather boring pace and I have nothing much to blog about. Before you feel sorry for me and my dull life, realize that I work hard to keep things as calm and simple as possible. When I say boring and dull I don't mean that we are doing nothing, I just mean that nothing we are doing is interesting to other people. We wake, we pray, we eat, we do school, we talk, we have lunch, we do a little more school. I take kids to the library or to friend's houses or downtown or wherever. Neighborhood kids come over, ask if we have any snacks, I make something, listen for the thanks, rest on the couch, get up. Make dinner and eat dinner and walk the dog and go to bed.

In between, children leave scooters in the driveway, I run them over, ( the scooter, not the kids), ruin my bumper, empty threats are made, apologies are given and accepted. Laundry piles up, laundry gets done, dishes pile up, dishes get done, I ride my bike, buy some songs on itunes, go to the beach, read to Maggie, clean toilets, pull hair from drains and throw it at the wall and laugh. Wonder if I should leave it there. Who will notice? Only me. I clean it up.

Go to church, leave feeling refreshed. Ten minutes later we are all arguing in the car and I'm asking if anyone listened to anything. Silence, but only for a minute. We go for family bike rides and forget Maggie's helmet and shoes and Greg takes care of it, again. We're off on our way. We go to the park and the beach and for walks. We talk. We laugh. We eat. We yell. We say we're sorry.

I check in bedrooms and see piles of messes and am told to stop saying we belong on Hoarders. But we do belong there. I empty the fridge, I clean the fridge, I wonder why no one throws out empty containers and I leave some in there just for fun, just so I can say "see, how do you like it?" And they never like it.

Friends come over for lunch, children play, cry when they have to leave, we assure the little one she will see her friends again and very soon. I take a walk with a close friend. We laugh till we can't breath. We talk about our kids and school and life. I get in my car and am happy. Realize it's late and dark and I may run out of gas on the way home. Panic. Make it to the station, promise I will never do that again. But I will.

Think about my sister. Miss my sister. Send my sister an email telling her I will buy a new phone this week so I can call her. I said this last week, too. And the week before. Assure her I have nothing exciting to tell her anyway.( Write this post to prove my point. )

Take Buster for a walk at night. Warm and quiet and peaceful. Almost start to cry over the embarrassment of riches that is my life. Try to remind myself not to take it for granted. Dull, boring, quiet, whatever you want to call it, I'll take it as long as I'm given it. I've been blessed and I know it.

9 comments:

Terri said...

GREAT post! So simple and so true.

I did have to stop reading and take a break to breathe after the comment about throwing hair at the wall. LOL

Julie said...

I'm a fan and I request a new post every day! I love this, the throwing hair at the wall really cracked me up too!!

Deborah Macfarlane said...

Thank you my sister! I got a sneer from my daughter
who is doing her math homework at the kitchen table while I read and laughed hysterically at your post.
I will excuse the phone now that you posted such a delightful little slice!...

ann marie said...

Oh you guys must try the hair throwing...so very satisfying!

ann marie said...

Oh you guys must try the hair throwing...so very satisfying!

Tiffany said...

I completely admire your simple life! Simple is good...I'm learning.
If you enjoy hair throwing you should try spaghetti throwing. Just take cooked spaghetti after it has cooled and throw it around your kitchen, it will stick to everything. My friend, Michael, and I learned this while babysitting together one night. The kids thought it was the funniest thing ever. I wonder if they told their parents...we weren't asked to babysit again so maybe they did.

Kirsten said...

Yes!!!! This is great! It is ALL good isn't it??? I do think it is a sign of maturity to be happy in the ordinary everyday.

Julie said...

So many more thoughts on this... first I'll say I'm terribly excited to be going on a cruise next week, and I hope it goes by slowly, but really I always want every day to go by slowly right now. I like my normal life (it's not necessarily a normal life though:) ), and Madi just said yesterday she wished time would stop when she was reading so she could read as long as she wanted without time going by (I've always wanted this), AND Mike just said this morning that January is his least favorite month, and I realized living in Florida I have no least favorite month!

Anonymous said...

Yeh-well I had to call Roto Rooter and pay over a hundred bucks a clip to clear the drain because your mother wouldn't let me throw the hair on the wall. By the way, is that where the name, "Hair of The Dog" came from?