Found: Art
My daughter made this colorful plastic disc from a crafting kit awhile ago, one where you make a design out of plastic beads and then melt them in an oven. I recently found it in my spring decorating box and realized I had to find a place for it. I've been longing to paint the kitchen, wanting more color but lacking the time for such endeavors at the moment. Not only does this provide me with the color I long for, but it makes my daughter happy every time we come in the door.
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Found: Time
Busy. This is our theme word right now, as it is with so many people. Good busy. But it can get exhausting as I've learned from past years. So I've tried to offset the manic feel to the spring by carving out moments. So far, so good. Since this is the day and age of carrying your phone with you everywhere and most phones have a camera attached, I've even documented some such moments...
Dates with my son at the bookstore when my daughter is at dance class.
Comics, cookie and cocoa - The happiness trifecta.
Sometimes we go to the beach instead. Not to swim yet!! Nope. Too cold for our thin blood. Sometimes we walk and sometimes we just gaze at the lake and talk. Sometimes both.
Me time. This is an odd photo, huh? It is taken behind the one way glass in the viewing room at the kids' gymnastics gym. That is my son getting spotted on his handstands, btw. I'm at this gym for three hours straight, but at least it is only one day a week.
I've learned to bring books and am actually catching up on some reading, even if I do spend every other second watching my kids tumble through half closed eyes and clenched fists. I must have been a clumsy gymnast in my youth because every time they learn a new trick I have about ten different memories of me getting hurt doing said trick. Luckily, for their heads and my heart, they seem to take after their father in the coordination area.
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Found: New Love - Morning!
I've spent my whole life happily greeting 2am like an old friend. Part of the fun of adulthood is being 'allowed' to stay up all night reading if I want to. However, the side effects of such nocturnal habits are never pretty. Literally and figuratively. This year I have so many goals for myself, my family and our business, that if I want time for it all I had to carve it out of more productive hours. Oh, late nights are fine, but they are more suited to reading or mindlessly surfing the net. I am not able to create much of substance after 11pm. So if I want to get stuff done, it has to be during the day.
So I discovered morning. It started out of necessity and I've been battling with this morning monster for many months now. But suddenly, this battle has turned to a full on love affair. It started with the return of the sun. Now I can see this beast I am battling in all her glory and GASP! She's gorgeous. Who knew? Well... lots of people, but until recently I wasn't privy to the info.
And I am tamed. I am converted. I have given my heart to morning and all she promises. And the side effects of waking early? They are pretty much amazing. I start my day by picking one of the many beautiful places to walk around my town. Wow. Talk about a vitamin for my soul. Of course, there hasn't been much late night reading recently, or blog surfing either. But I have all dark winter to catch up.
Until then... I'll be here:
All these pictures are taken by my highly inadequate camera phone, because it seems while I am getting used to waking up at 5:00 a.m., my brain cells are not yet functioning well enough to EVER remember my real camera.
And here:
Can't forget here as it might be the last year for this coal belching beauty:
And ohhhh.... here. I love it here:
I live on the west coast of Michigan, so the sun sets over the lake. Some mornings though we get sunrise reflections. I love those mornings.
Waiting for summer.
Here:
Here:
Of course... Here:
From the other direction:
Good Morning, Sun.
Watching the fog roll in and the moon set:
Foggier harbor view:
The fog about to envelop the land:
All my night loving years this outrageous morning stuff has been going on around my sleeping self. Likely mere hours after I finally succumb to dreams. I used to treat morning like an enemy or at best, a beast to be conquered. But I feel like I've fallen into my own rabbit hole, only this is a world that makes more sense than my nocturnal self ever did.
Found: Comfort
My twentieth class reunion is a few scant weeks away. Thanks to facebook I actually want to go. It seems the same people that used to make me laugh, still do. And people I was once to shy to talk to seem approachable and real to me now. However, it wouldn't be true to pretend that I don't have mixed feelings about the whole thing.
I will be going to the reunion a different person than I pictured I would be and don't get me wrong, I like myself. I love my life. But I am a heavier, grayer, and more blue collar version of myself than I ever expected. We do weird stuff like homeschool and live on the cheap-side of town so we can live within our means comfortably. I am not ashamed of any of this, but it is there... the bits of anxiety remembered from high school dynamics, from the mixture of the girl I was and the woman I am - trying to find peace with one other and with the person I still long to be.
I imagine I'll feel a bit nervous, but once we get there we'll find a little drinking, a lot of laughing, most of us happy to see the real people behind the facebook profiles. Until then though, I've listened to the following song a lot. Maybe a little shallow, but since it is a mash-up song from the show Glee, a show about high school anxieties it seems really apt. And it soothes my inner insecure teenager. And it makes me cry a little for the anxieties my daughter will likely feel some day as well. Oh, to delay those years as long as possible!
So, lots going on here. This spring finds me grateful, humble, manic, excited and introspective. Wishing everyone who stops by here a weekend that wows you, be ye of the nocturnal or diurnal breed. There is something awe inspiring out there at every hour of the day it appears. Who knew?