Wordless Wednesday: First Fair

Green Thumb, Here I Come

I asked myself a question Sunday afternoon, "If I could only study one thing for the rest of my life, what would it be?" Yesterday, while driving home from work, I answered my question: "Plants." Plants make the world go. Everything that happens in this world is because of plants. For far too long I have stood back, watching my husband plant, transplant, build garden boxes, and care for all the plants in our house and on our land. I said I didn't have time, but I now know the truth is that I am afraid of doing something wrong. I am afraid of killing the plant. Why? Am I afraid a great googly-eyed plant monster is going to come after me for killing a seedling? Plants are more forgiving, and tougher, than that. If you've ever tried to kill a burdock or a poke plant, then you know what I'm talking about.

It's time to really slow down, and not just hear my husband when he talks about gardening and plants, but to actually retain what he tells me so I can benefit from it. So the entire family can benefit from it.

Monday, Now with 10 Percent More Happiness

My morning started out pretty crappy. The bug took forever to go to sleep last night, then woke up crying twice, then it started raining so I had to close all the windows (which is terrible right now because our central air is broken and it was 92 yesterday.) All this before I woke up later than I planned and skipped practicing yoga and got to work just on time even though I'd left early.

I off kilter. I didn't want to be at work and I was on the verge of having one of those, "poor me, why do I have to work away from home" days, then at lunch I watched this on Wil Wheaton's blog:

• The Art of Being Furiously Happy

I am amazed. It makes me want to be silly like I was as a child. When I was kid I used to play music outside near our busy road and dance to it. Hoping to entertain the drivers, hoping Michael Jackson would drive by and I could tell him how big a fan I was, or maybe hoping someone would actually give me money so I could buy toys. I don't know, that was 30 years ago. Now I'm scared to say anything to anyone because they might think I'm being silly. I really need to work on letting my silly guard down. I have added the The Bloggess to my iGoogle page so there's my first baby step.

This is a blog I read regularly: The Happiness Project. I bought the book before discovering the blog. I even made my own happiness project, but I got off track nearly as soon as I started it. This afternoon I find myself wanting to draft a new happiness project and get to work on it ASAP. Maybe one month will just be finding ways to be silly.

Of course music is always a way to be silly and happy too. Crank up some crazy ABBA tune like "Dancing Queen" and go for it.

Wordless Wednesday

My Thoughts Exactly

I read the following at The Variegated Life

• How can I teach the Critter to be gentle if I’m yelling all the time? How can we teach the Critter to take care of his things if we’re letting clutter pile up everywhere? How can I teach the Critter that his dreams matter if I let the shitbird frighten me away from my own true heart’s desires?

These are exactly the same thoughts I have about raising my son. I don't want him to remember his childhood as a time when he was getting yelled at all the time, because that is how I remembered my childhood for so long, and I hated it.

I want to go home from work at night and play with him quietly and teach him things but, I get home and he goes into some other mode. He gets grabby and screamy and all he wants to do is go outside even though it is dinner time and I am starving. So I rush through dinner and we go outside and he is mostly good, but as soon as we get in the house, it starts all over again. Perhaps this little guy just wants to have the camping life also. I can't wait to take him camping. To introduce him to sleeping in a tent. Maybe, since the air conditioning appears to be broken, we should sleep outside for the rest of the summer and have a taste of camping.

I also want to let him have fun and discover all the wonders of life, but it's hard to balance the fun he has spraying the water from the bathroom faucet with my knowledge that water is precious and should not be wasted like that. Does anyone ever find the balance? If you have, let me know how you did it.

We Have the Time

We have the time to do what's important to us. Don't believe me? Look at these examples:

• Jim C. Hines works for the State of Michigan full time so he writes his fantasy novels on his lunch hour.
• Neil Gaiman had several projects with deadlines looming, but he had a story he just needed to get out, so he wrote one page a night before going to sleep.

There are so many things I want to do that it seems impossible, but I'm working on aligning things. This morning, rather than go back to sleep when the dog woke me up a half hour early, I practiced sun salutations. I am currently writing this blog post on my lunch hour. Today I plan to vacuum my truck, which might never have been vacuumed in any of it's 10 years, because it's been driving me crazy for years that I don't have time to stop at the car wash and do it. Well, I do have time, I just need to realize and remember it. I have been getting cd's to listen to in the car because my musical tastes don't match any of the radio stations around this area and I'm tired of listening to Democracts vs. Republicians on NPR. All it takes is 2 minutes to switch out the cd's in my case but I told myself over and over again, "I don't have time, I need to leave right now." It's amazing how much better I feel listening to good music during my daily commute.

What are you going to do today that you never had time for before?

Fruits of Summer

The strawberries are done for the year, but we are now enjoying black raspberries by the handfuls during our walks and still being able to collect some for freezer jam. Plus our mulberry trees still have several berries that have barely begun to ripen.

Every night that the weather and mosquitoes permit, we take a walk on the paths in our yard. When we get near the mulberry trees he demands to be let out so he can walk over to the tree and pick himself some berries. He also enjoys eating the black raspberries, but we discourage him from picking those himself--he knows all about thorns.

I love that my son already knows where some of his food comes from. Harvesting the garden this year will be great fun for him, if he doesn't pick all the plants before they have a chance to produce.

I love the physical, fleshy, edible, fruits of summer, and the seeds of knowledge that they are planting in my son's mind. One day soon he will bear those fruits as beautifully as this summer has borne her strawberries, black raspberries, and mulberries.

To Make Life More Like Camping

Yesterday I looked around my house again. My son has too many toys, I have too many unused blank journals, we have too many dishes; there's too much stuff everywhere. I thought, "I don't need this stuff when I'm camping, why do it need it when I'm living?"

When I'm camping I can walk around without tripping over books and papers. When I'm camping, I do what needs to be done when it needs doing. When I'm camping, I am free. I want to make my regular day-to-day life more like camping. So how do I do that?

Step One: Donate everything I no longer need or love.

Step Two: Stop buying things I don't need or love--even if they're $ .49 at the thrift store.

Step Three: Clean something everyday.

Step Four: Enjoy some fires with my family.