Horticulture

Adam bought me my birthday present on Saturday.  It is the most beautiful little fiddle leaf fig you've ever seen.  I've been wanting one forever.

Meet Felicia:

They're expensive and daunting.  Will I kill it?

(Especially considering the corn plant that is really not doing well.)

Poor sad friend.  His new home is in our bedroom.  I'm hoping he will appreciate more humidity from the master bathroom.

Adam pointed out that there are lots of healthy plants in the house.  For example these guys have bloomed all winter and I love them.

I dwell on the corn plant.  He told me that sometimes plants just die.  I insisted, "No, there has to be a reason!  I have to fix it!"

Which comes down to one of my character flaws.  I always want to "fix" it.  No matter how often Adam tells me that I need to be more trusting and less controlling (or trying to be controlling because who am I kidding?).  I can't make my corn plant thrive any more than I can make everything perfect always for my children.

Over and over I come to the conclusion that instead of trying to see the end from the beginning, instead of trying to convince everyone of what is Truth and what Should Happen, instead of trying to fix everything, I need to be still.

I need to decide and seek answers to the question of today.  What can I do today?

Today I'm going to talk sweetly to my plants.  All of them.  The thriving ones and the intimidating one (please don't die little Felicia!) and the struggling one.

For today, I'll try my best to do what I can.

Grateful Friday

Teach us delight in simple things.

Rudyard Kipling

When Mark started going to school, Adam and I decided to have lunch together once a week.  Sometimes we have lunch together 2-3 times a week.

Because we can.

It is marvelous being married to him.

*****

I went to book club last night.  I love book club.  We talk about all sorts of random and unrelated things and it feels like a safe place.  For example, there are the mothers who think Junie B. Jones books are terrible and won't let their children read them.  There are the mothers who will let their children read them, but after every page they discuss how Junie B. is not acting appropriately.  And then there's me.  I love Junie B. Jones and we no holds barred read them (Emma) or listened to audio books on road trips (all of us) back in the day.

Is this why I have sort of sassy children?

I don't know.  My point is, there's room for everyone at book club.

It makes me happy to have a group where you can be vulnerable about both big (serious life choices) and little things (books our kids are allowed to read).

With the right sort of women, you feel like we're in this together.  We remind ourselves that we are better than the parents in The Glass Castle.  We are all doing OK.

***** 

I got this picture texted to me yesterday.  In a surprising coincidence, Braeden's second cousin who happens to be serving in the same mission, also has to go home for recovery because he needs surgery.

Branson (who needs ACL surgery, poor guy) is flying home today and Pam, his mom, told me last night that Braeden is taking him to the airport. 

It's a great thing about life.  You have experiences that prepare you to help someone else in a similar circumstance.  Empathy for the win.

The state of the union

Adam makes me laugh periodically throughout the day, either in person or through texts.

Braeden is as happy as a clam.  And also Stella sent me a picture that someone had sent her of him.  The people of Virginia Beach are maybe my lifeblood.

The senioritis is real for Emma.  She is making plans to decorate her dorm room, reminding me that she may be too busy to come home when she's in college and generally viewing her current homework with disdain.

I on the other hand will never be too busy to go to Provo and wait outside her classes with homemade signs proclaiming my love for my baby girl that I love and just miss soooo much.

She can run but she can't hide.

Mark is working on a monologue for his latest round of auditions.  Also, he's working on the foreign policy he thinks our country should adopt relating to South America.

You innocently pick up an 8th grader from school and you get an earful of how he shaved 25 seconds off his mile in P.E. and his opinion on the Monroe Doctrine and then what he thinks needs to happen now.

Then we get home, he eats anything and everything he can find and he disappears.  Words are used up.

Finally, spring has sprung.  Spectacularly. The sunshine is just over and over making my day.  Flowers are blooming, green leaves are shooting up out of the ground and showing up on trees.  I walked to the mail box and a bright blue bird swooped in front of me, grasping nest material in its beak.  It's good for the soul.

A new season reminds me that things change whether they are wonderful or just to be endured. 

The beat goes on.

Things I don't understand

There are any number of things I don't understand.  (And by any number, I mean a big number.)

I have never been completely flummoxed by greeting cards before though.

Monday while I was waiting for Braeden's emails to come in (like I do), I was perusing Zulily (like I do).

I saw these greeting cards.

I'm trying to imagine a scenario where you would need this card.  One possibility is if you want to send it in a passive aggressive fashion to your husband because you want him to take you on a weekend getaway.

Fortunately they come in a pack of ten.

That means ten weekend getaways!

Alternatively, maybe these are intended for people with life coaches.  Every time there is a trip to pack for, you can send off this card and your life coach will send you a packing list.  I have never had a life coach but I'm assuming it's just a series of greeting cards sent back and forth, right? 

Then there were these:

Maybe you would need a whole set of ten cards to ask ten girls to be your flower girl.  Maybe?

But for a maid of honor/matron of honor?

You only have one of those right?  Is this so you can ask lots of candidates?  Cover your bases in case they are unavailable/unwilling?

Or would someone need a set of ten because they anticipate needing them for subsequent weddings.  (This man may not be a keeper, I'd better get a whole set of these cards....)

Maybe this set is good for mothers of many daughters.  They can store them in a file folder and when each girl gets married, voila!  They are prepared with cards.

This may be entirely beside the point, but chances are if you are close enough to ask someone (or ten someones as the case may be) to be your maid of honor, wouldn't you maybe do it in person rather than mail a card?

And you thought I spent my time wondering about important things.

Maybe you didn't ever think that....

Capable // not capable

A while ago our front door stopped functioning.  It worked from the inside but not the outside.  Adam shrugged and said that was fine, we didn't want just anyone coming in anyway.

I told him I thought we should fix it.  I thought Mark could do it.  Adam said he was worried that if we started unscrewing screws, the whole thing would fall apart.

Mark heard him say that and from then on, Mark was unwilling to try.

I told Mark I liked him better when he was younger and fearless.

Yesterday I had a YW presidency meeting in our living room and was reminded again that the door handle was not working.

After everyone left, I said, "Mark, get a screwdriver.  We're doing this!"

He sighed and asked, "What kind?"

"Philips head."

And away we went.

Mark unscrewed the initial screws and like Adam predicted/feared, he ended up with a handful of metal parts.  About twenty of them.

"Um," I said.

But Mark was invested.  He inspected all the parts.  He tried one thing and then another.  He very quickly figured out how all the pieces worked together.  He patiently assembled the mechanism, then took it all apart because it wasn't quite right and then assembled it all together again.

Repeat repeat repeat because part of it was bent (?) and you had to do it just so or it wouldn't work.

About this time, I asked Emma to go and switch the laundry and start a new load.  She admitted she didn't know how to do that.

Really?

It reminded me of how she could write her name before she was two (seriously) but one day I realized she didn't know one animal sound.

There are holes in my parenting.
 
I led her downstairs so I could teach a girl to fish.  I told her, "You'll be doing your own laundry next year.  I think this summer you should start doing your own laundry."

"Or," she said, "we could have you keep doing it so we can savor this golden time a little bit longer."

"Or," I said, "you can start doing your own laundry this summer."

We went back to admire Mark's work and help him hold things while he was screwing them together.   When Adam came home, I told Emma, "Quick!  Go distract Dad until Mark gets this fixed."

Emma went flying into the garage and by then it was just funny because 1) you can't truly hide the fact that the front door is disassembled no matter how distracting Emma can be and 2) Adam wouldn't be upset anyway and 3) I had confidence in Mark.

Well placed confidence.

The door is fixed.

Interpreting my dreams

If you want your dreams to be as fascinating to other people as they are to you, don't mention it's a dream until the end of the story.
@thewoodenslurpy 

I have a rule, instituted because Emma was that sort of child, that I will only listen to a dream if it is 30 seconds long.


That's all.

If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.

I don't usually remember my dreams but when I do, I can usually trace them back to something really real happening in my life.

For example, I woke up Saturday with a sore jaw from clenching my teeth all night.  I had dreamed about Emma leaving home.  In the dream I was mournfully sad and thinking it would be so much worse to send her than Braeden because when Braeden left home, at least I still had Emma.

(Side note:  What's going to happen when Mark leaves?  Despair and wretchedness, that's what.  One time I was lamenting my children growing up and leaving home and my dad told me I should have had more children.  I don't want more children.  I want these exact same children.  For longer.)

I was walking with Emma in the dream and then I quickly scooped her back in alarm because we were at the spot between my grandparents' house and my cousin Shanon's house where I sometimes saw snakes when I was growing up.

(Another side note: I was unreasonably scared of snakes as a child.  They don't really scare me now--mice are way more scary now--but when I was a kid, and would walk to Shanon's house, I would determine just where along the walk it would be closer to run home or run to her house if I saw a snake.)

(I never claimed to not be a weird kid.)

Anyway, back to the dream.  Are you still with me?  I realize the hypocrisy here because listening to dreams is the worst (hence the 30 second rule) and I'm writing about my dream.

In my dream, at the snake spot, an enormous bigger-than-you've-ever-seen snake was crossing the road and I was holding Emma back and protecting her.

(Because I'm suddenly a slayer of snakes?)

I don't know.

In my non dreaming state, I haven't been nearly as sad about Emma graduating as I was Braeden.  For one thing, rather than a mission, she is going to college, 30 minutes away.

In my dreaming state, I think I'm sad and will miss her and want to save her from everything bad or unknown or scary, including really big snakes.

OK, was that less than 30 seconds?

Grateful Friday

I'm grateful for America.  I acknowledge it has its problems.  The president for example.  He embarrasses me.  A lot.

I mean, we voted and that was the best we came up with?

Anyway.

It's still a great country.  Drive thru dry cleaners, for example.  How great is this country?

Yesterday was sort of a banner phone day and while I swept and mopped the kitchen and folded laundry, I talked to my mom and both sisters.  We talked about the mundane and the big.  Like we do.

After I hung up with Marianne, I thought about us.  We've been in this mother thing together pretty much from the start.  (She got a nine month jump on me.)  We've talked over sleep schedules and potty training and chores for recalcitrant offspring and home schooling and public school and extracurricular activities and sending kids on missions and now to college.  It's been a huge part of our identity, this motherhood thing.  It's the main thing that matters.

And it occurs to me after we discussed trips and college majors and options, options, options for our kids, that they are swimming in opportunities.  Those kids are practically drenched in them.

What more could we want as mothers (assuming they, you know, take all our advice and make the most of those opportunities)?

I'm grateful for America.  I'm grateful for the freedom of a dizzying array of choices, chances to fail and chances to succeed and a whole lot of chances for adventure.

Speaking of adventure, Emma's French teacher gave us all a pair of these glasses last night at our meeting.

We are ready for whatever bright lights await!