my blog title is so appropriate

To my life. Everyday I feel a little confused about something or other. I think this applies to everyone though. We all have moments in our day when we need to stop and think.

This morning I couldn't sleep (big surprise, I know). But I started to think about my schedule and how much I like it paralleled with how much I hate it. The two really are equal to each other I think. I like that I am able to get as much done as I can possibly get done everyday, it feels good to be successful, physically at work while also knowing that the work I do is helping the rest of our team get their work done successfully. Unfortunately there is also this looming cloud of just sheer frustration with this schedule. I have a hard time sleeping, I hardly see my friends anymore and the worst thing is that when I have my kids I'm exhausted. I still do everything we want to do with them but I'm just so tired when I have them that I feel like half a parent. Wierd image in my head now of what I would like like as half a parent. I would be just my upper torso, there mentally but not quite able to do everything physically and sometimes it would switch. Go brain for some odd visuals.


I have been missing my Grandma a lot lately. It seems to be a theme in my family though because one of my aunts sent all of us a recipe question and now my cousin, Amy started a blog dedicated to her recipes and other family recipes we all love. It's here, called Love, From Grandma's Kitchen. It is truly beautiful. Grandma's food was her way of showing us all that she cared and wanted us to be happy, healthy and well fed. She made sure we all knew the recipes she learned as a child that she loved. She passed down little tricks and things that I use in my everyday cooking. I use the same techniques that she did with me as a kid with my kids. I can remember sitting at our kitchen counter on a bar stool watching her cook and looking through a cook book and saying that I wanted to make something. Grandma would go to the store and the next day we would be making it.

My first experience with Red Velvet cake was with her. She even let me make orange butter frosting for some reason and I accidentally put so, so much food dye in it that it looked crazy. No one would eat it. But it was delicious.

It's funny because I was thinking to myself the other day that I can't help but think of her and my family every time I step into my kitchen to cook. I feel best about it when I am cooking for my family, my friends. I feel like I am passing on something that she gave me, a priceless gift. Something that will move forward in everyone, because who doesn't love to eat?!

It's amazing how one woman affected us all so deeply.

Oh my god

I SLEPT! I slept all day, it was beautiful. I woke up and it was 6 pm. Insane I know, but I did not have the kids today and I was exhausted!! It's been a week between kids, work, a root canal, a car accident and some hiking thrown in as well I needed the sleep.

This weekend the kids and I are going to my best mom's friends house for a birthday party for her son. He is turning 5. We are excited. Clair is just about the sweetest, funniest gal I've met in a long time and I love her. To top off our wonderful friendship our kids like each other! This always makes it easier and we have plans to force them into a lifelong friendship just so that we can hang out more often.

I think it's going to work.

I need to find a roommate ASAP. So if you know of someone who might be good, tell them to go here: http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/roo/2285217168.html and contact me.

Tired

I always always feel so tired these days. I don't think it's that I'm not getting enough sleep. I think it's more that the sleep I am getting is riddled with my brain and it's urge to be constantly thinking and pondering how my life is going to work the next day.

I'm curious to know if everyone does this. Do you lay awake at night for hours and think and think and think about what you are going to do the next day about situations that are stressful, exciting or sometimes even unimportant? I do, I do it every night and not even writing it down is helping.

I wonder if I need to paint again or at least be creating again... Maybe next week I will pick up some paints and see. I do have my watercolor I need to finish anyway.

On a seperate note, it is finally spring here in Washington. If you live here you know that is no small thing. It means that we can all pretend that the dull, grey, snowy winter didn't happen. It means beer on the porch, BBQ, Daffodils, Tulips, Cherry Blossoms, Lilac.... oh the lilac!! I can't wait to see the lilac, it is by far one of my favorite flowers. So beautiful and they smell so good.

I for one have already pulled my birkenstocks out of the closet. I am going to wear them the second I possibly can without being too cold!

Falling

I am falling in every direction these days. My car, the car that my Grandma gave me, got in a wreck on Saturday. Kid had no license, no insurance and no job. Yay. My insurance won't cover all the damage done and now I am without car. I live 45 minutes away from my work. I have two kids that I have to shuttle around. I can't afford to get even a crap car until the end of next month. Doubly Yay, here. Life it seems is being topsy turvy.

On the bright side, I have beautiful friends who live close and are helping, a lot! I don't know where I'd be without them and the fact that they are helping and supportive is worth more than anything right now. In the mean time, I am a bus rider now and so ensues some interesting stories, I am sure. Especially since the busses here have WiFi! Oh the joy, the joy!


Working overnight shifts is both a blessing and a curse all wrapped and tangled into one. I have more time with my kids but I am less awake and more grumpy. Is it worth it? I'm not sure I know the answer to that yet. I never get enough sleep, but nothing new there I have always had trouble sleeping.

I met a man. I met a beautiful wonderful man and I can't wait to see how it's going to go... Cross your fingers, hold your toes.

Starting Fresh

Its a new day and a new year (well a few months into the new year anyway). And I am a newly single lady. It's been a while since I have visited this space or even checked up on it and I'm sorry.

I haven't been feeling it lately. I've been on another journey, I don't know where it led me yet or why I went down that path but I did. It's been unusual. It's been wonderful. It's been time to say goodbye to it for a while, I just wasn't ready.

Isn't that interesting, when we need to stop or finish something but we aren't ready so we just keep chewing on it until we just can't chew anymore. I think a lot of us do it and noone really talks about it. We talk about everything else but that. We talk about all the things we should be doing which is all the things we aren't doing.

So, i am going to try to be here more often, not for you. For me. This place helped get me through some things that I don't think I would have gotten through otherwise. If you read it that's great and if not that's great too. For me though, this is therapy. I'm writing what I feel and what I want to do with my life here in a place that is both safe and yet not so private that when I close my computer I won't feel like noone has heard me or understood me. That is part of life, being understood and heard. It makes up more than we ever want to admit. Being alone, being quiet aren't things that anyone ever wants forever. We all need someone to listen to us and to listen to.

At least here there is the illusion of someone listening. Someone's understanding.... somewhere.