Where am I at today?

Managing my space is still a challenge but one I embrace and seek to improve. Today I am the mom of one married son, a son preparing to go to college, a high school girl and two elementary school girls. I still have one kid at home, but it is my 18 year old son who is busy editing his novel and going to play performance 3 times a week.

Each day starts with seven pages of scripture at least, prayer, exercise and a lot of water. I might be too focused on myself in the morning. I do get the kids to school but they usually eat cereal. I want to improve my morning interaction with the kids. Goal.

One thing I try to do daily is interact individually in a positive way with each child, even my married son (at least a text). This is easy with the elementary school girls but takes more effort for the older ones sometimes because they are busy. Goal.

I want to begin to create more. Goal.

Creating quality takes thought. I need more focus in this area. Another goal.

Life is a blessing.

Eternal Cycles

Sometimes it can be frustrating to see the floor dirty again right after you've cleaned it, the clothes piled up after spending hours folding, the kids hungry again. But it becomes easier to handle these frequent occurrences when they are seen as part of a fluid cycle of life.

Some people just include cleaning in a routine each day so it isn't something they have to think about. That is helpful, especially if you are the kind of person that thrives on consistency. For some less organized types (sometimes referred to as "side-tracked home executives") it requires a bit more effort. It helps me to see routines as an appendage to who I am, not my main purpose.

No one, probably not even paid ones, wants to feel like just the maid.

So, I am trying to have the attitude to just roll with these eternal cycles of cleaning, cooking and clothing. And place my focus on the center of this cycle: my family. And to see myself as I am, the whole package.

And Here It Is October

I have been making progress in my job.

Two things: selling my house forces me to be ready to show the whole thing, clean, at the same time. The house is close to ready, most of the time.

And: I have been making more time for my heart to seek fulfillment and I have been happier. I have felt like a kid again. And I look back on past years and see struggle and pain and depression that I didn't know was there. "If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." (I've always hated that saying, actually). There certainly is truth to this.

It's painful to grow up, to mature and see how wrong-thinking you were about things, about yourself and the world. I'm still learning about who I am.

I've been exercising for almost two years now. I've been trying to improve my appearance by actually caring what I look like. I have three daughters and I know that I have to demonstrate strength and beauty to them through my actions and evidence.
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I've been thinking about coolness and confidence, snobbery and kindness. The quality of life that I want to create for my family walks the line of valuing beauty without becoming vain; of valuing excellence without looking down on people who don't strive in the same way.

I know a woman who is a writer. I tried to be her friend. She basically made me feel like I wasn't cool or smart enough to be her friend. It hurt. It was weird to read something of hers that described how someone made her feel excluded and how hard that was for her...so it hit me with force that she was treating me the same way. I stopped trying to be her friend. I didn't need the humiliation.

I don't want to be a snob. I am kind of a food snob, and a bit of a design snob (not that much any more because I know that not everyone can even afford what they like). But I hate the feeling that I get from some people I know that treat me as though they are smarter or better than I am and so my presence is superfluous or simply irritating. That just feels so lousy. If they were really better than I am, they would use their superior intelligence to lift others, to find the quality each person has and build it up. That would be a true genius. That would be a beautiful person.

I stumbled on a blog of a very beautiful person. She is confident and gorgeous and talented (from what I've seen). But she isn't a snob. She is filled with pure love for others. She shares her life lessons openly about loving yourself and loving God, about being confident. About creating a loving marriage.

I have always been a bit of a snob about not seeking the approval of others. Being "cool" seemed to take people down the wrong road. I wanted none of that. I thought I was above "cool", maybe even better than "cool." Ah, pride and its ugly head.

I see myself wanting a little bit of cool now though. Not being popular, but being my best self: dressing nicely, taking good care of my health and body and looking my best. I can see I think that inner confidence like Mara has can only make people strive to be better and to feel joy in this life we have before us. Too many years of my life passed in joyless drudgery, and it wasn't because I was a mother or wife. It was because I didn't know how to live with confidence on a daily basis. It was because I didn't see.

A New Year, New Push for Excellence

We need new beginnings to help us overcome our natural tendency to lie down and take a nap instead of work hard on something.

I decided last week that I need to work on being more deliberate in my efforts and desires to be a great mom and wife. So, I decided to declare 2011 the Year of Loving Deliberately. I think adding more love is the quickest way to improve life-quality.

I'll have to work on the specifics now, as that is what the success experts say: make goals specific if you want to actually achieve them.

What Did I learn this week?

I've been very busy. But it isn't as hard if I take time to exercise and relax to get everything done and still feel sane. When I missed my workout, or my TV time, I felt more stressed. I do watch TV while doing laundry, but the mindlessness of both activities is good down time.

I am trying to be more focused on spending quality time with each child. That is hard. Especially with Silas who is rarely home or with a spare minute. I did make an extra effort to attend his cross country meet and I think it did matter, even if he was a little bugged I was there since he felt like he wasn't going to run well (but he beat his best time by 5 seconds!)

I started, finally!, reading "Anne of Green Gables" with Eden, and Chloe is listening too. Anne is such a great character that I've wanted to read this to Eden for some time. Having an upcoming lesson at church on my duty to God in relation to my children made me get to work and finally do what I wanted to do, but didn't make myself do. Religion ain't so bad!

Someone has to do the laundry

I'm not sure if I've used this title yet on one of my posts on my other blog, but I think this would be a great title for a book.

I don't call myself a feminist, but I certainly believe that men and women should be equal partners when they are married and that women should be able to choose what they want to be and do in life. I do harbor some residual belief that men seem to be better at doing things than women, like when my husband stays home he is better at organizing stuff and if he put his mind to it, I think he would run the house better than I do because he would see it as a job and not as his lot in life, although that was more my thinking about 10 years ago. I think I have changed my views (thus this blog) and am learning to run my household better. (And I also wonder why men seem to be better chefs than women. What's up with that?)

Which kind of brings me to my point: because I was raised in the climate of freeing women from the drudgery of housework, I was not taught how to organize or incorporate the concept of caring for the home into my body of knowledge (if I have one of those). But, even if women have been "liberated", someone still has to do the laundry! And when you choose to stay home and create a good quality of life for your family, doing the laundry seems to be a huge part of the process.

Now I'm not trying to minimize the efforts of my mother to teach me how to function in the home, but the counter efforts of my scholastic education made me less than prepared to keep up with all this laundry. At least that's my excuse!

The truth is, I try to ask my sons to do a load (or to "reboot") the laundry every day. Then I fold, in front of the tv. Or I don't and the clean laundry sits in the baskets. Sometimes in the living room, which is where the tv is (I wish we had it somewhere else, but that's where it is) and sometimes in my bedroom, which Dave HATES, but at least it's not messing up other rooms. So, I try to keep the laundry ball rolling every day. And that's how I keep seven people clothed and bedded.

I'm not the only one doing it luckily! Besides the boys, Dave helps (mainly his own, to keep his shirts from being left in the dryer and getting all wrinkled) and Ella loves to help too!!!

I'm in it to win it!

I had the second part of my root canal done Friday. As I lay there wide-mouthed, a blue dam jamming my jaws apart, I listened to the radio and thought about the words to the song, "I'm in it to win it."

I thought about what I want to win. I thought about wanting to be great at something. I don't feel like I'm great at any one thing. I've never been drawn so passionately to one thing that I have developed the focus necessary to become excellent at that one chosen thing. I'm a dabbler. (That brings to mind a scene from a Disney show, sadly enough, from Sonny with a Chance or a Song...or something where the musician disrespects her efforts at song writing because she is only a dabbler). I enjoy doing lots of things. So I am a dabbler.

I chose to try to be a great mother and wife. And person. I'm trying not to be a dabbler in being a great mom and wife, but I know that my lack of focus in general transfers to my mediocrity as a mom at this point.

I want to show love to my family. That requires a lot from me. But it is the best kind of requirement.