My Right Now and the Beginning of Summer

It’s hot outside. And humid. I just don’t feel like sitting inside all day long.

But it’s sunny out and the garden is looking spiffier than it has in a very long time.

Oh, it’s also Father’s Day which is falling on a Sunday after a lot of ballet recital stuff and a church band performance for the son. And my sister’s visiting. I am trying to play catch up with the chores and make food and collages for my 100 day project and write a blog post and …

Our vacation is planned for this week and somehow, I feel dread instead of happy anticipation. It’s supposed to rain and we’re waiting for monies to come in. I never did lose the weight I had wanted to by now. I dread the bathing suit.

To counter balance any negative self thoughts, I have been concentrating on being proactive, doing my best and letting go of the rest, and feeling out where my feet are placed. Because Summer causes upheaval and I haven’t been to the gym in Days and days.

“Life is organic” my friend once said. It ebbs and flows no matter how much we wish for it to stay this way now forever. Sometimes, as when Summer begins, we just have to concentrate on keeping our footing… with a nice pedicure and a cute pair of new sandals. And count our blessings, Two healthy happy kids, a garden devoid of weeds, and family and friends that are very supportive. Everything happens the way it needs to happen. I’m going to sit back and enjoy the ride for a little.

Read about the mental destruction of Summers past and how I finally began a better chapter a couple years ago in this blog post titled How Summer Did Not Start Out Like Plummeting Space Junk.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Fiona is almost 6 years old

My Wee Fiona is about to turn 6 yrs old in a week. She’s over 55 pounds and 4 feet. She’s a solid beautiful little lass. 

We’re at that place where she’s demanding competency and independence. Reading like a pro. On the verge of her life. And life has many many lessons to teach both of us.

So I leave her in her bathtub for a few minutes the other night and I hear her call me.

” What do you need Fiona ?”

“Can you bring me my blond Barbie baby?”

“I don’t know where it is.”

“OK, just bring me the brown babies then.”

I walk into the bathroom. Ken’s got his pants on but Barbie is naked. Seems they kissed and now she is having a baby. 

“Whoa there Fiona, how about you let them get to know eachother, buy a house, and have a puppy first. See if they don’t kill it.” She conceded to the puppies.

With age comes the distribution of knowledge. Birth and death are at the top of the list for needing to know. Wish me luck.

And this year, a low key birthday celebration for Fiona. See these posts for the previous three years’ parties. The Moana party here, the Frozen party here, and the Minnie party here. 

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Fiona’s Moana Themed 5th Birthday Party

We celebrated Fiona’s Fifth birthday with a Moana party theme. We’re still doing the parties old school with family and cousins to play with. And the Moana theme was truly a great excuse to reuse my fabulous palm trees over again from the Viva Havana fundraiser.

I took a good long time to conceive of and create some of the details and touches that made it feel fun and tropical islandy. Had the palm trees but needed the tiki god idol pieces to fill out the corner cabinets. They’re painted on hunks of cardboard.

The kokomora coconuts are made from actual coconuts. We’ll be smashing their heads in soon.And having flowers is a mainstay but this year we had a tropical theme that Miss Patti indulged and sent me home to play with all these beauties.

And the food included pulled pork (nod to Pua) on Hawaiian rolls, Hei Hei island terriyaki skewers, Tamatoa crabcakes, Te Fiti island slaw, and pineapple boat fruit skewers. Many of these ideas plus the little sails on the cupcakes were gleaned from Pinterest. Remember, I troll for my ideas first from Pinterest before I commit to a main art project or two.

My husband owns the lighting company so I still have these party fete lights strung across my living room.

As for the wee Fiona, she had so much fun, she didn’t know which end was up. Almost all the people that adore her were there and she got more presents! And her very own mini cake which she decorated with her own bath toys and paper umbrellas. It truly was a day to remember.

If you enjoyed what you read, please subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Feeling Your Pain Versus Being Your Pain

Since being a mother, I’ve had many “growth opportunities” to rethink how I express how I’m feeling about myself or my children. These are called AFGOs (another fabulous growth opportunity). Today, instead of yelling at and being impatient with my daughter for crying again for the umpteenth time about her pain which I perceived as nothing , I chose compassion instead.

Honestly, I tend to shut her down sometimes in expressing her feelings because I’m not allowed to. I am often blindly uncompassionate for myself. And her pity parties are so exhausting but she’s four and that’s what it is.

When Fiona takes it to the next annoying level where she seems to draw her real identity from her “boo-boo”, it’s worse. She’ll milk injuries for drama-filled days and it’s truly annoying. Baths are miserable as even the thought of getting the boo-boo wet will throw her into shrieking fits of anticipated pain. My bathing duties are just too hard then.

So the other day, when I saw we were headed into a series of fits and drama over a perceived boo-boo, and that my usual tactics of “knock it off or else” were again not going to work, I shifted. I asked her if she thought her boo-boo made her more special and she said “Yes”. And then I slyly refuted that theory by explaining that her boo-boo wasn’t as exciting as how good she could write her name and set the table and make up cool songs.

And I probably went on to say how all the people who loved her knew she had these marvelous talents too. And you wanna know how quickly that boo-boo didn’t hurt anymore? I shifted from fearing she might be someone who’d cut herself just to prove she was alive to gladly seeing her back as a normal little 4-year-old whose boo-boo suddenly wasn’t so bad after all. I just had to out think myself.

It seems a cautionary tale too about how we can be so used to an injury or a mental trauma from our childhood, that it becomes who we are. I recently outed myself for this very scenario using the past as an excuse to keep me from fulfilling my potential. If we over-identify with our pain, we become the pain. And I’d like to be a person who’s mending from my injuries, not someone who’s stuck a victim state for which nothing will ever make it better.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest  too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Let Me Tell You Where I am Now

Let me tell you where I am now.

I’m sitting in my craft room. My laptop is in front of me and I’m perusing my journal trying to grab on to something of interest to write about. I’m good with the writing as long as I’m interested in the subject.

In an hour, Fiona will descend the yellow school bus stairs for only the second time. Her Pre-K year has begun.

Let me tell you what Pre-K means to me

I was a new blogger when I got pregnant with her. So the blog and my writing talents have been worked on and developed parallel with her growing up. Like the blog is her sister. Except, were you to ask me if the she or the blog comes first, it would probably always be her. The trick was to not use raising her as an excuse to not continue my writing the blog if just to keep up the practice.

Let me tell you what that means

Now in the light of having time rolling out in front of me to get down to some deeper and more intensive writing. I’m freaking out. In a good way and a bad way.

Of course, I’m ecstatic because having time to myself is the one thing I crave beyond really good food and entertainment. I’m giddy and gearing up to find out what I really do think about hope and healing and good change in my soul. Conversely, I’m terrified that I’ll squander this time I’m being gifted by laying down and letting my fear keep me from showing up. Paralysis in the face of progress and vulnerability has been an MO before.

Let me tell you what I’m doing differently

I got a book out of the library that had been recommended to me titled Deep Work by Cal Newport. The idea is that the world is on this awful slide to promote the shallow. This means that people who do deeper more thoughtful work are going to be needed more than ever as people’s brains start to shortcut and short-circuit for lack of proper usage. I am betting that I have some pretty cool stuff inside me that I need time and flow to find out. And all the methods and techniques I gleaned from this book will be put into use to guarantee that I hedge my bets on success. You kinda need a game plan to keep yourself engaged. Our brains are feeble as well as untapped.

Let me tell you, I’m scared

When we attempt to be our truest selves, there may be shrieking harpie voices that tell us we’ll die if we continue. That’s just the primitive part of our brain kicking in to keep ourselves safe from tigers and social ridicule. In that moment when we accept or don’t accept the emotions as fact, we could get to move on and gain confidence in the fact that we were vulnerable and did it anyway. That’s the story I want to be telling.

My daughter faced her first day at Pre-K. That’s some pretty scary stuff. Each of us and the fears that we face are specific to where we are. First day of Middle school, high school, college, and getting married all include scary unknown factors that seem insurmountable to us at that point in our lives. But it’s all relative. We just need to acknowledge our inner compass and keep moving.

Hope this give you perspective. On me or you, doesn’t matter. We all need a little perspective every once in a while.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your email box. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest  too. I am always practicing Intentional In-touchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.

Save