March 15, 2012

• RWOTD {Scrap}

  Mostly I am blogging today so that the last blog post I wrote is not at the top of the list.

  I want it to go away.

  You know how, as a writer, once in a while you write something and almost immediately when you post it you just wish you wouldn’t have.  But now you spent all of that time writing it, so you may as well go ahead?

  I normally write my posts quickly, my fingers fly about as fast as the thoughts come to my head, I hit “Submit” and I feel happy with what I wrote.

  But not that last time.

  So…this is my attempt to successfully move past a post that I am not too proud of.

   

  {SCRAP}

  There are a lot of different directions one could go with this word, but what I was mostly thinking of is how every day we have little scraps and tidbits to remember and, if we had the time, it would be awesome to be able to scrapbook every day of our lives.  Although it may not be interesting enough for anyone to ever look at, it would still be really cool to have.

  I think about how many more memories I would have of my childhood if my Mom would have taken more pictures and written more things down.

  The thing is…when we don’t document these scraps of memories…within a short time they become smaller and smaller until they disappear among the haze of normal life. Sure, there may be some memories that stay with us through the years, but not many.  And at least for myself, I have found that the memories that do stay are very random and kind of fuzzy, like your kids’ favorite blankie.

  I am quite thankful for all of the thoughts and memories that I have captured through the years via my blog. It has been almost 7 years now that I have been blogging, and though I rarely go back and read my old blog posts, I have a dream of one day making a book out of them.

  And then I will probably have to hide it somewhere that my kids will never find it and have one of my best friends swear to come over and burn it (along with my journals) in the event of my sudden and unexpected death.  Or, I will sort through the posts and figure out what I would want preserved into the next generation(s) and make the book accordingly.

  So…

  YESTERDAY’S SCRAPS

  **First of all, I can tell you that “scraps” is a possessive noun and the word “yesterday’s” is what is possessing the noun “scraps.”  My son was horrified to learn, yesterday, that his “all-knowing Mom” (yeah, he’s still young enough to sort of believe that) was not certain how to answer a 3rd grade girl’s question about her English paper…regarding possessive nouns.

  I had to explain that it wasn’t that I REALLY didn’t know…I just needed a little refresher course. Ok?

   

  **For once I spent the first few hours of my Wednesday NOT doing bookwork and NOT talking on the phone. Those two things are generally what I am doing between 7 – 9 AM on Wednesday.  It was kind of a welcome break and I felt really relaxed as I puttered around and did little house-wifely jobs, made spaghetti for supper (to be baked and pretty much ready when I got home a little before 5:30 PM) and spent some time catching up on the computer.

   

  **I took my “double shower” with Nikki, which is now part of our Wednesday morning routine.  I shower first, then she hops in with me to get her shower.  It saves me from having to do the whole bath tub routine, but she does need to learn a little bit about the whole “water in her eyes” thing, because she kind of tends to freak out about it. And then I tend to get grouchy.  And then it kind of goes downhill from there.

   

  **I am reading a book called “Freedom” by Jonanthan somebody. It is our book for this month’s book club. I am very enthralled by this book in a sort of weird way.  What I love about it most is the way that it delves into the minds of the characters and brings to light their motives and their thought processes in a highly fascinating way. At least to me.  I got to do a little reading while I waited for the spaghetti noodles to cook and while I ate my breakfast.

   

  **Speaking of breakfast. I am in the first 4 days of the “Flat Belly Diet” (it is called the “Jump Start” part of the diet) and this is what I had for breakfast three days in a row, including yesterday.  A cup of cornflakes, a cup of skim milk, a cup of blueberries and a 1/4 cup of sunflower seeds.  Plus, I have to drank a glass of this special “Sassy water” which is quite unappealing to me.  (You add sliced cucumber, sliced lemon, fresh ginger and some spearmint leaves to a pitcher of water and then drink the water.  Since I hate cucumbers (yeah, so sue me) the taste of the water is not so appealing to me.)

   

  **I helped in Derrick’s classroom for a while this morning. I actually like the “idea” of being a teacher and I think maybe I could make a good teacher’s helper.  Helping the kids with their questions brought back (good) nostalgic memories of the times when I was one of the older ones in school and I was allowed to answer other kids “flags” and help them with their work.  As long as the kid catches on relatively quickly, I am OK.  If they take too long and I can’t think of any other way to explain what I just already said 3 times, then I tend to lose patience. Which is why I am NOT a teacher.  The patience they need to have pretty much amazes me.

   

  **I also had lunch with a bunch of 3rd grade boys, including my son.  The boys and girls sit separately by the time they get to the 3rd grade (mostly, anyway) and so there I am, surrounded by 3rd grade boys. I fast forwarded in my head and wondered how long this will work out.  Can you picture a 37 year old Mom sitting at a table of 7th grade boys and feeling welcomed?  I am sort of doubting it.  At this point, I am still looked up to and the boys (at least the more chatty ones) actually want to include me in the conversation and tell me things about their lives. I think I’ll just ride the “Mrs. Miller is still cool” wave as long as I can.  After that, I’ll just be sad.

   

  **I spent a good 10 minutes of my life walking around our new “guy” store in town looking for a bucket with a lid, so that I can make my own laundry soap.  Darn you, Stephanie O.    And I DID try to find a person to ask, but every employee was either hiding or busy.  Nikki said she was “too tired to walk” and wanted to sit on a bench while I did my hunting, but I thought that might not be a good long-term idea, so we got a cart.  (This story is extremely fascinating, isn’t it??  Sorry. There really is NO punch line.)

   

  **I hung out with my “Wednesday Girls” and had a wonderful time.  They had recently seen a couple of pictures of me from my wedding and I think they were really having trouble reconciling “Audrey then” with “Audrey now.” My friend Karlee actually referred to the person in my wedding pictures as “that girl”, who, I reminded her, was actually the same girl sitting not 3 feet away from her at the moment!  But, this is what I explained to them.  I never did fit the Mennonite mold.  Even from as young as 14 or 15, I couldn’t make myself just go along with things that I didn’t see the logic in.  I didn’t have a lot of choice about how I dressed or what I did…the rules were the rules. Yet I always had this battle inside of me between what I was told to do and what made sense to me.  That caused me quite a bit of trouble in my growing up years and by the time that I was 19 I had already decided to leave the church I grew up in.  Sometimes, you just know something isn’t for you, which doesn’t mean that it isn’t the right place for other people. 

  I told her that my personality really wasn’t any different back then, I was always talkative and outgoing and kind of blunt, but I think she could hardly get past the way I dressed and my caterpillar eyebrows. It was a fun conversation!  Being quizzed out by my friends about what it was like to grow up Mennonite is a relatively new thing for me and I would imagine I would ask the same questions if the tables were turned.

   

  **I also went on a walk with 2 of my friends. I wish I had a picture to show you. Well, maybe not, actually. I had worn this super cute dress (given to me by a special friend) with tights and little black boots.  The problem was…by this time of the day it was almost 70 degrees and very sunny.  Not only were the tights too stinkin’ hot, but I also needed to borrow tennis shoes from my friend, which were a little too big. So picture me with a cute, dressy type of dress, a little black shrug, no tights and too big tennis shoes.  Just walking down the road with my friends.  And I still enjoyed myself. Although once, when my friend Morgan glanced over at me I said something like “STOP looking at my outfit. You’re making me feel embarrassed!” and I think she kind of wondered what was wrong with me!

   

  **In the evening we attended one of our (two) weekly Bible studies.  I think that this was the first Bible study group discussion I have ever had on the wedding ring.  I can sum up all of my thoughts on the wedding ring into about 3 sentences…as I explained to Jeremy on the way to Bible study. 

  “I wear a wedding ring because it is our culture’s symbol of being married. When someone wants to know if you are married, they check your ring finger on your left hand.  There are negative connotations that go along with the idea of a married person either “taking off their ring” or not wearing a ring.  I want to be known as a married woman and be proud of it in all situations.”

  OK. So that was 4 sentences.  But that is about as deep as the whole ring discussion goes with me.

   

  **On the rainy Monday at the beginning of this week, our kids constructed this fort in our basement.

  

  The next night they decided they wanted to sleep in it.  Nikki ended up chickening out and coming upstairs and sleeping on the couch, but the boys made it all night.

  Last night, they asked if they could sleep in there again.  We said that they could, but if Nikki got out again, she was not going to be going for Round #3 the next night.

  We got them all tucked in and just before I fell asleep for the night I had a flash of panic about them sleeping in their fort.

  

  Do you see how this heavy mattress is supported only by a propped up piece of wafer board?

  I awoke my nearly sleeping husband to say “Do you think the kids are OK in there? Do you think there is enough of airflow?  They’re not going to suffocate are they?”

  He said “Both ends are open, right? And they have a fan” and then he promptly fell asleep.

  I couldn’t remember. Are both ends open? I didn’t think so. It seemed like there were blanket over every inch of space.

  I pictured, in my minds eye, going down there in the morning and finding one of my kids motionless, all because I was too lazy to get out of bed check out the safety of their fort.

  Or, what if the mattress came crashing down on all of them? Would they wake up?  Kendall is a super heavy sleeper. What if I came down there in the morning and then whole thing was crashed in and they were buried underneath…never knowing what hit them?

  

  (The fort from another angle. It is quite a large structure, with room enough for all three children to sleep inside)

  So…I got up.  I went downstairs and I checked. And yes, there did seem to be plenty of air movement inside the fort. The one end was, in fact, open.  I hadn’t remembered that.

  I told myself “Audrey. Stop worrying so much. They’ll be fine.”

  And I went back to bed.

  And when I got up this morning, they were fine. Nothing had crashed. No one had suffocated.  But I still am not so sure about the structural integrity of their creation.

  

  There is one kid visible on this picture, but it turned out really dark.

  

  And here is another one who is about to be woken up for school.

   

  **Before bedtime, I jumped rope for a little while. Just to impress my kids (and husband) with my skills. Granted, my huge earrings and my necklaces made jangling noises with every jump, but I did 1 jump for each year of my kids’ ages (that adds up to 20) and 1 jump for every year of my age (33).  And then I called it good.  I used to love to jump rope and actually still kind of do. I wanted to have a contest with my Wednesday Girls but sometimes no one picks up on my awesome ideas and I have to let them slide!

  I remember as a kid jumping and jumping and jumping on the back porch of our house. My goal was always to see how many jumps I could do without messing up.  To my recollection, I did 700 hundred some jumps in a row without stopping and without messing up.  I wonder if I could match that record these days? Maybe with a little practice. Ok. A lot of practice!

   

  **Thursday is here and it is another day.  A day full of scraps of memories, good and bad, that may or may not be preserved. But at least I’ve got a few from yesterday!

  • 11:13 am
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