It's the little things...

Image courtesy of drow, rgbstock.com

Happy Thursday, friends!

Yesterday was one of those days. You know the kind I'm talking about: nothing seems to go as you'd planned, and everything about the day feels frenzied and chaotic. Thinking back, though, I can pick out several good things that happened, proving, I suppose, that every cloud does have a silver lining and it's the little things that count:

☺ I wrote a scene for my novel while sitting with my daughter at storytime.
☺ I had a nice conversation with a friend.
☺ I allowed myself to take a nap.
☺ I had an idea for a poem while I was walking into the grocery store with my three-year-old.
☺ It rained, and I always seem to be more creative when the skies are stormy and gray.
☺ There was a bottle of wine in the refrigerator to share with my husband once the kids were in bed.
☺ Supper wasn't too much work, and neither was the cleanup.
☺ In spite of all the craziness of the day, I was happy. I am happy.

What's good in your world today?

Wishing you all a Thursday filled with many blessings. ☺

Seven grapes and a headache

It was one of those days.

The morning started out promising enough. The sun was beginning to lighten the sky, hot coffee waited for me in the kitchen, and I had two hours to myself before the kids would be getting out of bed. Charis, my muse, had just shown up at the door, so I decided I would write. I had a new idea that I couldn't seem to get out of my mind, and I needed her inspiration.

Image courtesy of Vorfay,
rgbstock.com

Well, as I'm sure you can guess, things didn't go exactly as planned.

The moment I settled into my chair at the computer, all my dreams of a pleasant, peaceful, and productive morning evaporated.

Chatter from upstairs: the kids were awake.

Hands already poised on the keyboard, I decided to do what mothers all over the world do when they're in the middle of something and are certain that their kids aren't in imminent danger: I pretended I didn't hear them.

"Aren't you going to check on them?" Charis, who's not a mother, asked as she clipped her toenails with the clippers she had stolen borrowed from my medicine cabinet. Gross.

"Shh! Let's just wait a few minutes and see if they go back to sleep. I need to work on this idea." I nodded toward the pile of pink half-moons littering the floor around her feet. "And make sure you sweep that up," I said.

Charis glanced at the floor and shrugged. "You know, they'd better quiet down because I don't work in these kinds of conditions. It's in my contract: no quiet, no inspiration. Got any polish?" She stared at my chewed-off fingernails. "Sorry. Stupid question."

I sighed. "Let's just get started, okay? Last time you said something about the main character and a letter..."

A loud cry from upstairs, followed by a scream.

"That's my cue," Charis said, tossing my nail clippers on the desk and grabbing her purse from the back of my chair. "See ya another day."

"Wait! What about my story? The letter... What does it say? Charis..."

But she was gone.

I sighed. So much for the story--and my quiet morning.

I trudged upstairs to find the reason for the crying: the littlest one had peed the bed. Wonderful. I love more laundry, especially now that the dryer has become a piranha that tears holes through random items of clothing. In the interest of keeping everyone clothed, I've been forced to abandon the modern-day convenience and instead use every available doorknob, towel rack, and curtain rod in the house as a clothesline. It's either that or we join a nudist colony, which I have to admit I've considered because honestly, it seems like a lot less work.*

Always a silver lining.
Photo by David Wagner, Courtesy of Public Domain Pictures

Now you'd think that after that, the day could only get better, right? Yeah, not so much. After the pee-pee fiasco:

• The kids had a lunchtime food fight. It's such a joy to step on grapes and peas with my bare feet.

• My other, never-seen child, It Wasn't Me, colored on the leather love seat and hardwood floor.

• Our insurance man called while I was cooking dinner and rambled on for a half-hour, during which time I forgot I had been heating some oil in a skillet. Result? Burned pan and a not-so-nice smell in the kitchen. I'm so changing insurance companies.

• Then the shark (piranha, whatever) nibbled a hole in my daughter's brand-new, never-been-worn leggings after I had tempted fate by deciding to toss clothes in the dryer rather than search the house for another spare doorknob. You know--the leggings she needs to wear tomorrow because they go with her already-clean-and-dry tunic that nothing else matches. Yeah, those.

By the time my husband came home and found me lying in the fetal position on the love seat (I was using my behind to cover up the crayon that I hadn't yet had a chance to remove), I was dazed, confused, and exhausted, especially when it occurred to me that I'd eaten only seven grapes all day and had a headache the size of...well, something really big.

I probably should have gone to sleep right then, but Hubs had put the kids to bed (bless him!), and it was writing time. So there's that.

You know, clouds and silver linings.


*[Note: the Home Depot guys are delivering a new dryer tomorrow. Yay!]


How is your day going?

Little Miss Contrary

This morning's 100 words:

Sometimes as a kid I would get into moods where, whatever someone said to me, I would insist on the opposite. For example, if my mom wanted to read me a book, I would demand to play outside, even if all I really wanted was for her to read to me. Whenever I behaved like that--contrary to everyone else--my dad said I was just acting ornery to act ornery. In other words, I did it not because I felt that way but because I just chose to act that way.

I choose ornery today.

For the record, the ornery didn't last much longer than it took me to write those words. When I woke up this morning, I knew that today was going to be one of those rush, rush, rush kinds of days, and, dreading it before it even began, for a brief time I channeled my younger, immature self: Little Miss Contrary. My apologies to my husband.

Aren't the words that come from stream-of-consciousness writing wonderful--and wonderfully embarrassing--sometimes? :-)

Like taffy, I suppose...

I'm pulled in way too many directions.

With all the demands I get from others--husband, son, daughter, the list goes on--I have to ask myself: "Will I ever be able to put myself first again--without feeling guilty?"

And is it selfish of me even to ask?

Answers: I sure hope so -- and I sure hope not.

It's been one of those days...

Do they all plot against me?

I'm having one of those go, go, go days where I work and work and seem to get nothing done. I'd planned on writing today. I need to make some headway on my novel outline, but so far, I haven't been able to do much more than think about it. We had church, followed by a pancake breakfast. Then I had to work on getting the butter stains out of my daughter's outfit, definitely a task I hadn't planned on doing today--or ever, really. I tried writing after that, but it just seemed like one thing or another kept taking me away from the computer: my baby's cry, my son's plea for more milk, my own tiredness (I really need to start getting more than four or five hours of sleep a night)...

My daughter is napping now, though, and my son is playing quietly. I've had my afternoon coffee and am feeling slightly more alert. I'm posting this blog entry in the few minutes I have before dinner. It's something, and I feel better now that I've gotten some words down today. When I don't write, I feel incomplete; I need to write. I'm hoping that I can do more after dinner. Fingers crossed.

**I wrote this almost three hours before I was finally able to post it. That just shows the kind of day it's been. And even though dinner was over two hours ago, I still haven't gotten to the novel...