I am thankful for take out. After finishing the last of the weeding and putting mulch down on the flower beds around our house for the last three and half hours. I am thankful to have done my good for my family today and I'm clocking out for the evening! The only thing I have to do is figure out where I'm going to order dinner from.
Sometimes I seriously want to throw my hands up and scream like a crazy person into the sky. This crazy person in me usually comes out in the mornings around 8:10 am when Lyman needs to be outside for the bus in 5 minutes. The crazy person just doesn't understand why it takes 10 or more requests to get jackets and shoes on, backpacks packed and attitudes gone.
Today the crazy person came out when 10 minutes before this crazy person's wonderful oldest offspring needs to leave for the bus she asked him to find his jacket so that it was ready when he needed to go. Five minutes later this crazy person sees said offspring playing lightsabor fight with himself - the jacket is nowhere in sight. Crazy person reminds offspring she asked him to go do something. Offspring doesn't remember what was asked. Crazy person with clinched jaw repeats request - biting tongue when expletives would like to be released (not really - crazy person doesn't curse but sometimes really wants to!). Offspring runs around looking for his favorite jacket - gray zip up hoodie. The jacket is nowhere to be found and time is up. Crazy person gives him another jacket (essentially same thing - but pullover no zipper and red). Offspring breaks into hysteria over how he doesn't like that jacket. Crazy person can see the future and the future does not make her happy as it entails her having to get three kids and her own disheveled self into a car to drive offspring to school when he misses the bus over stupid jacket fashion preferences. It is not recommended for crazy people to drive cars anyway.
Crazy person throws her hands up in the hair and groans at the ceiling. Crazy person marches right up to offspring, puts red jacket on, explains that if he had been looking when she asked him to at first he may have had time to find cooler grey jacket and putting offspring's backpack in his hands pushes him out the door. Crazy person thinks about locking door behind him. Crazy person instead goes to sit by window to watch that he gets on the bus. One minute later bus picks up offspring with backpack worn backwards to hide the offensive red jacket and while he still is protesting wildly about having to wear it. Crazy person wonders if she is a mean mom. Crazy person sits down on computer to blog so that she can transform back into normal person.
I woke up this morning very early with the details to the beginning of a book. I couldn't get them out of my mind and instead they kept coming to me with greater detail. I decided to sit down at the computer and write them out. It was amazing to me how easily the words and storyline flew from my fingers. Before I knew it I had typed a 12 page first chapter. I am very excited about it as it is the first time Ive had more of a storyline in my head than a short story. This one could be my first book! It felt very natural and best of all I had so much fun writing it! Yay!
I am thankful for big bathtubs and heating pads for sore muscles. I did a lot of gardening today - moving 3 sq yards of mulch around the flower beds. Boo for having 5 more sq yards to go.
I have never attended a Broadway play but have always loved the theatre. See I even spell the word like a thespian would instead of theater. I loved being in the plays in high school and taking my kids to a play at the local HS last fall. When I was 16, my family went to NYC to visit when my brother graduated from Princeton. Most of us got tickets to see the Broadway musical - Les Miserables. The afternoon of the performance I gave my ticket to one of my family members in exchange for the $80. I, in my teenage stupidity, thought Id rather have the spending money. I regretted it even that evening when they all went and had a brilliant time.
So when the show came to Cleveland and our friends asked us if we wanted to go with them I readily said yes. On Saturday we went to the matinee showing of it. Our friends were able to procure really good seats through their employment and we were thrilled to see we had our own box right dead set in the middle front row balcony. They were the best seats in the house. The view was spectacular and the show was everything I could have imagined. I love the story of Les Miserables and it was a real moving thing to see it performed. Our seats gave us access during the intermission to some fancy pants lounge with complimentary snacks. I felt like royalty. It was awesome. We even had a personal waiter to take an order for us in our box for refreshments when we resumed our seats. Of course that meant we had to order something right? We did and it was there in less than 5 minutes - transmitted through his little computer thingy. The pictures below are of us at afterwords in the lobby of the Palace Theatre in Cleveland. It was a pleasure to go with Andy to the show. I sort of felt like Elizabeth Darcy being escorted to the theatre by Darcy in the Darcy Box. Yeah I know - Im obsessed.
Last Thursday I forgot to post - it was such a busy week that it was Saturday before I realized I forgot. Andy then suggested for a change that week I should do a Selfish Saturday. Funny boy.
Today I have something really special to be thankful for. This week, one of my friend's father past away unexpectedly. As I have helped her through this unexpected loss as best as I could - and I know I cant begin to understand what she is going through - I realized how fortunate I have been when it comes to not having had a loss like this before. I have never really lost a loved one, with exception to elderly grandparents - and their deaths were expected after long years of sickness. I haven't had close friends pass away, lost children, siblings, parents - nobody. I can count on one hand and not even fill it up the number of funerals I have attended. I am thankful for this. I understand that when we die we don't cease to exist. I know that God lives and loves us and that there is a plan in place for each of us. I know that our spirits live on. This knowledge comforts me when I think about and see the pain my friend is going through. I am thankful for this knowledge. I am thankful that my own dear parents are still living. They are older than this friend's father. I worry about them because I know that I am getting to that stage in life when their lives are in their final decades. My dad is 68 yrs old and I worry about him when he lifts heavy things or does construction on our family cabin.
I am thankful that for now, we are all still together on this earth. But if tomorrow came and my family was taken from me I am also thankful to know that this will not be the end of us. That we are a forever family - and we will be united once again in the life after this.
Our beloved fish, Rachael, has passed on from us after a lengthy life of almost 3 weeks. The autopsy report is inconclusive - it could have been a result of lack of feeding for a day or two, over feeding by zealous children on other days, or the food being stored in an old antibiotics medicine bottle. The paper boat placed inside the fishbowl (the bedlamite responsible for that has not come forward) that sank to the bottom made for a sad shipwreck next to a upside down fish. I'm starting to think our family isn't ready for the responsibilities of a pet. Rachael will have left us with some happy memories though - like the time Ruby found a chair pushed up next to the counter where she lived (the culprit here has also not come forward) and had a great time splashing her fingers into the water and learning the word "fish". May she truly (and for the first time in her existence) rest in peace.
