Red

Red is the color of me

On days I love

And days I don't

I wish I was a mellow chilled out green

But I'm not

Never have been

Probably never will be

The good news is

My family loves me anyway

Red is the color of me

Flushed with gratitude and joy

Thankful for my husband and kids

And all the flaws they forgive.

This post inspired by prompt # 4 at Mama's Losin' It! and linking up with TidBitThursday.

Monday Comes So Early

Monday 5:45 AM comes so early
Time changes between Sunday at 10 PM
And Monday's alarm clock
Shrinks and shortens and reveals
A very tired me
I'll gulp one more cup of coffee
And try to pull myself along
Pull out clothes and tights and shoes
Prepare myself because
Time changes between Monday at 8 AM
And 5 PM quitting time
Drags on and lengthens and reveals
A very tired me

Six Word Saturday

Adult me wakes before the sun.

Savor Small Romantic Moments

I am not a firm believer in fortunes or palm readings or what the stars may plan out for me.  I do my own thing: good or bad or indifferent, it's all me.

Today I opened a small chocolate and tossed the wrapper in the trash quickly and without hesitation as I popped that candy in my mouth.  The second chocolate I ate slower and in doing so, realized the wrapper was telling me something.

It said, "Savor small romantic moments."

Ah, that is something I can get behind 800%.

I will savor a bowl of popcorn with my sweetie by my side, the TV on to one of our million DVR'd shows, snuggled together on the love seat, side by side, hearts still twined after 20 plus years.

I am going to savor the hell out of all the little things that make up this great big wonderful thing we call love.  And after so many years, I'm not about the red roses and love cards.  I'm more about the dishes done, the car gassed, the kids loved, the dogs fed, and the popcorn made.

It's the simple things that warm my heart the most.

Although, come to think of it, roses are a nice, simple gesture!

Sadly, This Is My Kitchen

This week has been a headache.  Literally.  Since my glorious spill in the kitchen, my head has ached non stop.  I've slowed down and spend a lot of time resting, but as all Moms know, when you slow down and rest, the rest of life speeds up and gets messy.

Sadly, this is my kitchen this week. 

Even though this is the sight of my fall, and the fridge apparently has had it out for me and relished its chance to crack my head open, and it is a cluttered mess of dishes, crumbled napkins, and empty yogurt cups, I still like my kitchen.  I love the yellow walls and the blue counters.  I love the pictures covering the fridge and the three dog crates taking up space against the wall.  I love the wooden table my Grandpa salvaged and gave to me and I love the step stool that all kids fight over.

I guess, even though it is often the messiest room of our house, it is the place where we are often found, talking.  Just the other night, I sat on the step stool and talked with my son as he made brownies.  My daughter did her homework next to me while I made dinner. 

The kitchen is our hub, and the good times are worth the mess. 

And, honestly, my head aches just enough that I don't care if the brownie baking mess is still in the sink!

This post inspired by prompt #3 at Mama's Losin' It! and I'm linking up with Papa is a Preacher TidBit Thursday.

Why I'll Never Mop Again

Last night I was enjoying the heck out of freshly mopped floors, when they are super scrubbed clean and smooth and silky and I love to walk barefoot across them.  But it was too cold to be barefoot, so I was wearing socks.

And then I decided to playfully kick my husband in the rear as we were walking into the kitchen.

That turned out to be a surprisingly terribly decision.

My socked feet lost all purchase with the slick floor, and just like I slipped on a banana peel, my feet went up and the rest of me came down.  Hard.  My backside is bruised, but worse, I slammed my head into the fridge door.

My husband was with me in an instant.  I rolled onto my stomach and said I thought I was hurt.  I touched the back of my head and it felt weird.  My husband kept asking what hurt, and when I pulled my hand away it was covered in blood.  And the clean floor was actually collecting quite a large puddle of blood.

Well, I never expected that.

My son googled 'when do you need stitches' while my husband pulled out his rarely used combat medic training.  Google wasn't too helpful, although my son kept telling me my laceration was really awful looking and my husband kept pulling at it to see if it was bleeding and how deep it was.  In the pulling defense, I have a ton of hair, and most of it was soaked with blood so it was really difficult to find the exact spot.

I stood up and I said I was okay, and after 5 minutes, I said, nope.  Let's go to the ER.

Two staples later (which I took without any numbing up shot because I figured the numbing shot hurts worse and I've spent hours getting tattoos, one little moment of staple pain can't be that bad....) I have come home with the conclusion I will never mop the floors again.  The ER doc asked if I'd slipped on something, water or what have you, and I said no, but I had just cleaned my floors to a high polish, and he was not surprised.

Apparently, slippery clean floors are a highly dangerous thing.  I'll do my best to avoid them from now on!

6 Words

My cupboards are Old Mother Hubbard's.

The Good Books Of 2012

This year I did not quite make it to my lofty goal of reading 100 or more books a year.  I tried, but life got a little busy!  I managed to read 83 books.  My scrapbooking has fallen way behind, and I would not say my house is in perfect condition 99% of the time, but there is no way I could not read.

Give up reading?  It would be like giving up coffee.  Not going to happen!  Finding a really good book that just makes you fall into it, when you think about it as you fall asleep and first thing when you wake up, is a treasure I can't do without.

Being an compulsive list maker, I write all the books down.  Being a tad nuts, I give a three star rating to the books I'd read again, and one lone 4 star rating to the book of the past year that joins the ranks of the few I'd grab in frantic zombie apocalypse packing.

My Three Stars List:
5. Good Morning, Killer
8. Stories I Only Tell My Friends
9. Emily of New Moon
16. Emily Climbs
17. Emily's Quest
19. Call Me Irresistible
20. Honey Moon
22. The Preacher
23. She Came to the Valley
24. The Doctor's Sweetheart
28. Timeless
31. When Angels Mourn
36. Girlchild
38. The Time Travelers Wife
41. A Duty to the Dead
43. After the Golden Age
44. Madame Mirabou's School of Love
47. Robopocalypse
55. The Passions of Emma
57. A Test of Wills
59. An Impartial Witness
62. The Taker
63. A Perfect Blood
69. Heading Out to Wonderful
73. Kill You Twice
74. Criminal
75. When Venus Fell
83. True Sisters

And my favorite book of 2012: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.  Written in 1949, it is a haunting tale of the end of civilization due to a deadly illness, and how the survivors start over, forming a community and trying to get the hang of a new way of life.  My husband had read it before, and loved it.  I'm so glad he talked about it nonstop, piquing my interest!

I Spy

I spied a dollar in the road on my walk to work.

I spied a fur trimmed hat tied to a fence on my walk home.

I picked up the dollar......I looked around and didn't see a soul and it was soaking wet giving proof to the fact that it was outside for a long time......

I left the hat where I spied it......I gave it a long look at first because I thought it was an animal in the dusky sunset shadows and then at second glance because it looked like my son's raccoon "skin" hat, but the third look proved it wasn't alive or mine and long held fears of lice kept me from walking near it (did I mention it was tied at head height?)....

Now the dollar burns a hole in my pocket, suggesting I give it to worthy cause and no, the tip jar at my coffee stand isn't going to cut it.

The hat, even from a distance, still gives me shudders.

Linking up with Papa is a Preacher's TidBit Thursday.

Recounting Our Blessings

Over the weekend, my family gathered to celebrate the birthday of one pretty awesome person: my Grandma.  We hugged, we ate, we sat around telling her our favorite memories, things that she has done for us that we carry in our hearts always, we rejoiced and we laughed.

My Aunt and Mom said they know they have the best Mom in the world, and they are good mothers only because she taught them how.  The generational gap closed in that moment because I have said that same thing about my own Mom.  She's the best, and I'm the mother I am because she showed me.

Then Grandma said that was nice, and thank you girls, but actually she had the best Mom in the world, and she is a good Mom because her Mom showed her how.

This lineage of good Mothers has deep roots and strong branches.  I looked around the room at my cousins and our children, and I know it will keep on growing.  We've been blessed with an enduring example, taught from Mother to child, and a love that just keeps flourishing.

Six Word Saturday

Sunshine and frost, a beautiful world.

Thank you, Dana at The Daily Dose for six word inspiration!

How Do I Look?

Do I look like I've walked in the rain
With the wind blowing and rising and teasing
My hair into the spokes of the umbrella
And the only option is to painfully sever
Connection of stray hair and head?

Do I look like I should have driven
Taken a peek at the weather
And decided to err on the side of dryness and warmth
To arrive at work still perfectly coiffed
Without damp tights and soggy shoes?

Do I?
Well....maybe.

But I don't regret the loss of
Hair or dry shoes
The walk was invigoratingly nice
In a lovely stormy sort way.

Have A Typhoid Mary Christmas

I don't know if anyone else ever writes a post, then forgets they wrote it and it never gets published and then later you read it and think, why didn't I post that?  Well....this is something I wrote days before Christmas and I can't believe I didn't post it! 

My family passes around the stomach flu at Christmas like it is a treasured gift and everyone should have a chance to share it.  Young, old, cousin or sister, we shake hands and hug and the next thing you know, we've got the whole clan laid out with the flu.

I try to not be that person, the one with hand sanitizer and lysol wipes, the one acutely aware of how much contact I've had with a sick person, but I can't help it.  I go from the idea that a little bit of dirt never hurt anyone, to wiping my house down with a bleach solution in a split second when I learn of the illness sweeping through our ranks.

One family has fallen, another is half gone.  Only time will tell if we all succumb.....

Meanwhile, my house is squeaky clean.  That's the only benefit of this holiday season sickness!

Turns out it was a relatively mild illness, and thankfully, most of us survived unscathed.  I did feel sick for a week, but I know it was all in my mind.  I'm highly susceptible to the idea of nausea!

A Rational Irrational Fear

Sometimes, when I'm not feeling good and my dogs have turned clingy and can't be apart from me, even if it's just my husband who wants to sit with me, and they will give him a not very good natured growl, I will have an irrational fear that they know it's more than just me under the weather and I'm actually deathly ill and they can sense it.

As irrational fears go, it's actually pretty well based in rational.  What about those cats at nursing homes that seem know when residents are about to pass?  Or dogs that can tell when their owners are about to have seizures?

So when they cover me like a warm dog blanket, and there is excessive sniffing around my ears and eyes, I can't help but think it's a brain tumor.  Then I hear Arnold Schwarzenegger say in his best "Kindergarten Cop" voice, "It's not a tumor!" and I'm back in reality.

Arnold's right.  It's not a tumor.  And based on how close my lips came to being licked when the dogs thought I'd fallen asleep, I think they were really that clingy  because I had cracker crumbs on my person.

It's Spooky Dark At 5:45

As I bundled up to walk home last night, a coworker was very surprised that I was going to walk.  I thought maybe it was because it was so cold and the sidewalks have slippery patches and after months of healing, my ankle is doing really well.  One slip could ruin that!

No, she asked if I was nervous to walk when it was so dark out.  Me?  Nervous of the dark?  No way!  I laugh in the face of the monster lurking in driveways, who turns out to be a mild mannered garbage can.  I approach zombies without a care in the world, passing them as they turn back into light poles.  I hum in time with the ghostly footsteps that follow me for half a block, and when I turn to look....well....when I turn to look there isn't anyone there.  Ghostly, I says.

I confidently told her that the dark at 5:45 pm doesn't bother me so much.  It's the dark at 5:45 am that gets my heart pounding.  In the evening, cars are driving, people are getting home, the world is alive with normal.  In the morning, when it's just me and the dogs and no one else is moving, it takes a certain amount of bravery to get out and walk.

She gave it a thought, then said to her, dark is dark, and she's not walking in it.

Smart gal.  On the way home, all manner of trolls and hobgoblins were spotted at a distance.  They all turned back into bushes as I walked by, except for one, who turned into a cat.  Spooky!

Welcome 2013

 We rang in the New Year 

with Scrabble and Cider and a Twilight Zone marathon

and laughter, so much laughter!

My hopes for this new year are huge and wonderful,

No resolutions for me, but dreams of what lies ahead.