Journal of J

Ever wonder why that odd little thing pops in your head

makes you stay up though you’re in bed

Can’t sleep and dream

the thought just gains steam

So you follow it

hoping that it will quit.

Sometimes it is the path not taken

or some thing you’d forsaken

The what ifs and whys

things that make you pause and sigh

always happening while in bed

hoping to rest your sleepy head.

Ting a ling a ling….

Ok so I had to sing the bit from "Sleepless in Seattle" where Meg Ryan is driving at Christmas and singing along. 

Have had horses on my brain lately.  That and writing.  And reading.  Like Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books.  Recommend starting at number one but good in any order.  You do lose some cuz there are references to pervious events but you can deal.  I started reading The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.  It was recommended to me by my brother.  Lots of good view points in there.  Doubt I will be come a Taoist.  I have enough just dealing with what I am besides becoming anything new.  Just being wife, mom etc is plenty good some days.

I mentioned wanting to be a writer at my mom’s group.  Have been secretly wishing that for a long time.  We had talked about what our dreams were and how they have changed from before motherhood, now as moms and our future dreams as well as dreams for our children.  Made me think a lot about how a dream is a sign post on the highway of life and in the valleys we might lose sight of the dream but that it is still there when we top that hill again.  My writing sign post is there.  My motor isn’t running there yet though.  I am stuck in the mud as it were.  Still there.  Not sure how close I will get.  I also wonder how many will bring up my writing aspirations.

My Dad and I do a lot of horse talk.  Getting two more horses has got me to thinking and well wishing I had a huge bankroll.  I think I’d be tempted to get a few horses.  Investments.  I have thought since I was young (A dream along with the writing one) that it would be neat to train a horse from the time they are young- weanling-1-2 yr old. 

My downfall is lack of knowledge.  I have been doing more reading on it… unfortuantely I don’t do as well reading ‘dry’ stuff as I do novels and ‘juicy’ as it were.  Still I try.  And I let some common sense try to rule.  I had a good spill a number of years ago due to a horse that spooked cuz of treatment during a previous ride with another rider.  I was gimpy and drug reliant for a while…and of course scared DH.  Have had a good spill since.  The bruise impressed my DS a couple weeks after the spill.  The unpredictabiltity of horses.  What I dream of is a horse that is in sync with me.  Not sure I have found him/her yet.  Or if I ever will.  It is amazing when you do find a great partner.

A good quote to go with that…

A cat looks down on you,

A dog looks up to you,

A horse looks you in the eye

and calls you friend.

I don’t know how many people remember the old Fashion plates toys. It was a plastic tray that you could mix and match plates that had raised lines or outfits on girls and then shade over the top and create a fashion to color. It was fun, but limited. You only got so many plates. Though you could make designs floral etc and mix and match the whole outfit or just the tops and bottoms.

Sometimes I wish it was that easy- just pop in a new plate and bam a new outfit.  No sizing necessary.  No thinking. A different color- a new crayon- it isn’t blue anymore but a deep rich red.  Though there is a reason it was so easy… they were dolls and only came in a shapely lean silhouette.  Since I am not a shapely shape- it just doesn’t work that way. Plus there is that whole plastic thing.

So how does modern woman do it.  If you know- let me know.  Oh there are the Trinny and Susanna’s of What Not to Wear Fame - UK and also the Stacey’s of the USA version that are out there to guide you through the myriad of styles.  What does an average person do on a limited budget?  Seriously- a LIMITED budget meaning some serious creative finance at times.

I need a frugal fashionista.  I am one.  I want to be stylish, not frumpy.  I also don’t want to break my bank.  If I could drag my children’s wardrobes in on this venture I would. (They are sometimes less than stylish- yeah they are kids but would be nice for them to look like they didn’t just dive out of the muck.)

Yes I do shop the various thrift stores - sometimes a pain other times a goldmine.  Until I get a handle on what is a good ‘look’ for me I’ll keep searching.  After all there are only so many ways and places a gunny sack is acceptable these days.

So wish me luck on my forays into fashion.  And if you want to help me out a bit donate some more to thrift stores so they become gold mines for me.

Well the summer flew and apparently I took time off from blogging.  It has been a busy summer.

Garden went well.  Of course it got dry since I had posted about it raining too much.  So we had to water it.  Amazing how well things did though.  I have gotten about 4 green peppers, bunches of tomatoes- though I can never seem to get enough together to make salsa.  My carrots look good- though I only have pulled a few- hard to tell when you are just looking at pretty leafy tops.  Scallion onions are ’spicy’.  Dracula doesn’t stand a chance!  Oh and the cherry tomatoes (specifically sweet 100) are great!.  Just oodles of little red orbs that burst with flavor in your mouth.  I need to plant them again.  Sadly the different flower seeds I planted only yielded moss roses- the rest just didn’t do anything.  The 30 strawberries I planted died and the blueberries shared their fate.  Our oak tree had a ton of nuts that are keeping several squirrles happy.  Lucky we grabbed a few nuts in hopes of gaining a few more oaks.

Children are in school.  Both seem to be doing well.  Though it doesn’t stop me from being anxious about them learning to their potential.  Fun to see what new things they bring home.  My DS’s are great joys.  I sure do miss them during the day.

DD is a bit lost without them.  She and I will have to keep eachother company.  She would hop on the bus with them in a minute.  I have been just quick enough to keep her here. She hops out of bed in the morning almost faster than her brothers and dresses quickly.  There won’t be much to slow her down in the next few years.

I am doing a bit of baby sitting.  A relatives two girls- 5 and 2.  They are busy and mom is extra busy at work.  A bit of trial by fire.  So far the asbestos suit seems to be holding up.  Not sure I am good at the job.  We will see. 

I do like the hours and that I can stay home.  I don’t want to have to get a job.  I have a good list of what I want in a job and as far as I can see the job doesn’t really exist.  Right now I am just a SAHM.  I like it that way.  Would be awesome to pen a great novel or twenty, have a couple bestsellers a few must reads and maybe a movie.  Ok maybe I like to dream… while I am might as well dream big.

Weightloss wise - well I got down a bit and am back up then lolligagged not doing any serious work at it.  Today I think I am serious.  I realized either last night or the night before that I am not on that high I was when I was losing.  I think I need it back.  Also I would like to be done.  Ha! jokes on me there… make it sound like I can just quit when I get there.  well.  I can’t, I need this to be long term perminant.  I don’t want to have this fight all my life.  Though I think I will have to fight the rest of my like to some extent, but would like to not have  to work so hard for every little pound. 

SO now off to skim Mom’s group book.  Check kids and get snack ready.

Yes, I know interesting combination.  What can I say except that that has been my life the past few weeks. 

Well we’ll tackle rain first.  Rain.  Well other than water in the liquid form dropping from the sky and an important part of the earth, it has been putting a damper (yes a pun shameless I know) on my gardening efforts.  Yes I won’t say accomplishments that would be putting the produce ahead of the weeds.  Of which I have a few.  So I need to get into the garden to rid it of those few weeds.  They breed worse than rabbits.  Rain.  It has kept a horde of children in my house playing.  That is not a bad thing it is the mess part I don’t like.  The rain has also made it humid in my little corner of the world.  SOmething I am not crazy about expeciallly as it gets into the 80’s.

Lessons.  yes well who couldn’t use a lesson or two.  I think there is always something worth learning.  I decided to take a free online writing class.  What an adventure.  I am enjoying it.  It will be over in a few days and I am saddened by this.  My family is probably not sad since I have spent a lot more time on the computer, more time reading and more time writing.  I has been odd for me to say I have homework to do.  I haven’t had that since college and high school.  Been a while.  Though I am thinking about taking more courses.  Who knows what I could learn.  No I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.  Becoming a writer is looking good.  Little catch there though… someone has to like what you write enough to publish it and then a whole bunch of someones need to like what you write enough to buy it and read it.  There is also writing.  Not sure I am any good at that.

Messes.  Well I am Queen of messes.  See rainy day bit earlier.  Then I am good at making my own and not being very good at picking them up.  Plus then there are kids things that I am not good at taking care of.  Someone told me I need to thin out.  Yeah umm trying.  Not easy.  Not when I am running after kids anyway.  Yeah OK probably THE only one on the planet with this problem. 

So there you have it.  The rain, the lessons and the messes.  Sure not glamorous.  But it is my life.

I realized part of the reason why I don’t wear make up.  I hate standing there trying to decide what will look good.  No mirror.  So many kinds, styles, colors, prices.  Then there is the primer, foundation, concealer, blush, mascara, eye shadow.  Aaahh!  So I am not totally thrilled with what I got.  It looked fine in the bathroom mirror this morning but in the van mirror it looked like I had put on a mask.  I want makeup that just makes me look better not like I am going to some masquerade ball.  I do like the blush I got.  Helps that it was cheap.  It also doesn’t look like clown cheeks.  If it did that I’d just be short the red nose and big shoes.  So I guess maybe I should have gotten the stuff I had a sample of a while ago and liked.  Oh well.  I’ll just have to resign myself to activities that have lighting like my bathroom.  Or darker.   Dinner in the dark anyone?  Guess there is a resturant in London that serves dinner in the dark.  They have blind waiters that serve you.  Was an interesting news piece.  I might have to go there to hide my odd colored face.   

I wrote that a while ago.   I recently discovered that my face didn’t like the makeup.  Oh well.  Guess it wasn’t meant to be.  Sure paid for it… two weekends of face misery.  I thought it was an allergy to outside.  Truly had no clue what it was.  Finally Mother’s day I went to the Dr.  I just couldn’t take the dry itchy red face anymore.  Between the Dr and my hubby- apparently better sleuths than I - they figured out that I was making up my face and that was causing me misery. 

Of course it being spring I had a child’s program to attend.  I sure didn’t want to go out in public with the bright red coon eyes and irritated face that I had.  So what do you do to mask a problem- you put on makeup.  I didn’t use the culprit, oh no that would be causing more problems.  So I used a sample of the same brand, but a different kind.  Sure I looked human, not like some alien freak with red eyes.  I even got complements… on my hair.  I’ll take complements, glad it wasn’t on my face! That would have been too ironic.  At least it wasn’t that my face looked awful either.  “Oh, J, what happened to your face!?!?”  Shock and horror on questioning persons face.  Anyway feeling rather good that I wasn’t walking freak I attended program and went home.  To wash.  My face was hating me- again- still.  Ugh wearing makeup was not the smart thing to do.  But I really didn’t want to show my freakish form.  It was a set back in my recovery.  I was prescribed a drug to help out.  I don’t know that it helped that much.  I think time cured me.  That and lack of makeup. 

So now I am not sure that I will attempt the makeup scene again.  My face is finally starting feel like its old self.  Never thought I’d be thankful for the blotchy, acne, ruddy, blackheaded, oily face that is mine.  Funny how things tend to humble me.  I think I’ll live with this ugly mug of mine.  What are the alternatives?  Can’t live with out it… don’t want to tick it off.   

Yes, lovely spring time.  Warm days, cool nights, beautiful flowers and allergies. 

Yeah apparently that is why I look like I got punched in the eyes and instead of changing to various shades of purple they are various shades of red.  Man do they itch.  Where is the new scrub brush?  This ones completely worn through.

Here I was just thinking that I was looking a little icky under the eyes.  You know those dark under eyes.  Thinking that it marred my ‘perfect’ complexion.  Yeah right.  I have never had a perfect complexion.  Never will.  Trying to adjust to reality and move on.  So now with allergies I have puffyness there.  Instant collagen injection without the pain or Dr. bill.  yay right… wrong.

Perpetual itch.  Like the dog with the migrating flea that seems to itch himself until you expect to see a bare spot.  The itch that will drive you insane until you scratched yourself raw.  Not a pretty sight.

So how do allergy sufferers deal?  I am new to this whole thing.  I apparently was allergy free or oblivious.  How do they not look like the living dead or some other such horrid creature?  My guess is perfectly timed drugs.  I am of course not used to this so don’t have a drug of choice much less a perfect timing system to completely avoid any adverse flare ups.

So now to be sure to dose myself up until I can find the tree, bush or flower that is reeking havoc all over my face.   

It amazes me when someone is lucky enough to find their calling.  It is as though some muse magically directed the planets to align and they just fall into their destiny.  It seems as though it is handed to them on a platter.  It could be silver, yes it is possible.

I was just reading in an old Reader’s Digest about the creator of the Baby Einstein comany.  Talk about a lucky stay at home mom.  She’s an english teacher who has a baby and decides to stay home with her child.  While playing with her child she has a revelation.  With some luck viola!  She’s got a million dollar plus company that she sells to Disney.  Now while my older two were home I had never even heard of Baby Einstein.  Suddenly I am, or rather my third child, was given a Baby Einstein video.  She loved it.  Now why couldn’t I have thought of that?

I was given a link to a site about scrapbooking.  Several.  I checked them out.  As a neophyte scrapper I was looking for information, inspiration and direction.  Little did I know.  One of the sites I love is insirational to me.  The lady is so free.  It seems her scrapping led to a career in doing layouts and workshops.  Like she fell into it.  She is talented and artistic.  It is so neat to see the way she looks at things.  Inspiriational and insightful.  

When you think about it it’s amazing how many people are doing what they love and apparently with so much ease.

It seems like I struggle with just the day to day things that invisioning doing what I love seems distant.  A pig in the slop too busy rooting about that it can’t even come out to see what Charlotte wrote.  Sorry that vision wouldn’t get out of my head once it popped in.  I had to write it.

I seem to be drawn to writing.  Perhaps it is all the reading I have been doing, or perhaps the childhood dream of being a writer, or maybe even the fact that I was published once.  Right now something is drawing me that way.  Whether my muse has things lined up for me I don’t know.  I do have a lap waiting for my platter.  I have a feeling that it doesn’t work that way.  At least not for me.  I think I will have to make the platter.  Or at least figure out how to get free from the mud I am stuck in.  Then find the materials for the platter, and then line up my lap and… 

Maybe I should just be content to be in the now.  Maybe the now needs to be priority so I can be in the later.  Maybe now is how the muse prepares us for that calling.  Maybe like a pendulum, it isn’t just hitting the far balls so they can swing but also about the middle balls.  Sure they don’t swing much, they get banged on each side, but without them the far balls wouldn’t be able to swing at all.

Perhaps that is more the issue.  The fulfillment issue.  Maybe being fulfilled draws you to the calling.  Contentedness.  Seems as though those are illusive qualities we all want and admire.  Whether or not it is meant to be the only way to find your calling is to pursue the options.  For now I am pursuing writing.  Perhaps I will find it.  If I am lucky it will also find me.

I must admit I am a history buff.  I don’t know when it started.  Perhaps when I started reading all the "Little House" books.  What a life.  Wouldn’t it be odd to not see your neighbor for days, weeks or even months on end?  To hear a wild cat scream in the night.  Or mistakenly pet a bear thinking it was your milk cow.  All those things excited my imagination and my love of history.  Thanks Mrs. Wilder.

Perhaps it has to do with all the road trips across my home state.  When you’re in a car for hours and Dad says "Hey there’s a historical marker ahead, want to stop?"  "Sure, wonder what it says," you say.  So you stop and for about 5 minutes soak in the chisled writing on a granite marker telling about a trail or a valley or whatever important historical event that happened there long before you were a glimmer on the horizon of time.  So as you climb in the car and continue talking about it the event becomes filed in your brain for later.  Then you imagine what it was like.  No ribbon of endless white concert on which your metal horses are zooming by miles of prairie, no train tracks winding on their parallel journey beside the highway, no rest stops, truck stops, meal stops just prairie, sun, birds and wind.  Thanks Dad for putting history in a daily practical sense.  Thanks to my hubby who will stop at a historical marker all because of my whim to read it.  I hope my kids get that history is real and alive. 

Perhaps it is that I had fun history teachers.  These women and men made studying ancient cultures, geography and all the events from the dawn of time it seemed to almost our current times interesting.  Egyptian Pharaohs, Medeval knights, and immigrants all became real.  (No I didn’t sit at home studying the globe like a later teacher teased.  Though I could have done it and it would have been fun.  My knowlege of that was thanks to Mrs. H.  Thanks Mrs. H!) Amazing what a good teacher can do.  

Perhaps it is that I can remember historical events.  In high school I participated in a thing called Citizen Bee.  To be involved I had to take a test 100 questions about U.S. history.  I figured I did well since I was one of the 3-4 kids chosen to represent our school at the Bee.  Oh and surprisingly 100 questions on U.S. history weren’t  that hard.  (Maybe there was a good reason why I was called the "Trivia Queen".)  Anyway back to the Bee.  So one evening in spring our little group would head to Fargo to take another test and then compete in a Bee.  The test was to weed through the ones who really knew their stuff and those that didn’t.  I think I only actually got to the Spelling Bee part once.  I got weeded out after a question or two.  So I must admit some of the specific details of history did elude me.  Remember I didn’t say I could remember dates.  (I am even worse at dates now.  All seems to be set on a timeline pertaining to my childrens birth and ages now.  Prior to that I had another system.  Sort of like switching from Julian to Gregorian calendars.)

I do enjoy history.  I get sucked into modern recreations of history.  Old forts are very neat places.  The Chateau de Mores is awesome.  Even PBS does a good job.  They have had various programs about living in a certian time period.  The ones I have enjoyed are 1900’s House, a home set in 1900’s England, Pioneer House, pioneers settling on the prairie and Colonial house, one set with new colonists.  the latest program has been Texas Ranch House.  It has been fun for me to watch.  Granted the people are from the 21st century and have all the ideas that come with being of this time.  The challenge is to be true to that time.  A difficult task.  Yes I am insane enough to think that it would be fun.  Hard, a test of ones moxie?  Of course.  Sometimes a time machine would be fun.  These shows are sort of like that. 

I do like history.  I should read more about it.  The people are fascinating.  The mistakes we can learn from… I had heard that is why we study history… to learn from the mistakes.

I am glad I like history.  I think I enjoy the places I visit more when I know something about how it came to be.  Besides learning something new is fun.  You never know when you just might need it for a boisterous game of Trivial Pursuit. ;)  That is how I can pull some of those answers out of my….  Anyone want to play??