Be Yourself

For the last few months I feel as though I've been getting smacked over and over again with the idea that essentially, you should be true to yourself.  BE YOURSELF - how incredibly obvious, simple, impossible, and easy to forget to do all at the same time.

Because I'm not always "myself".  Quite often, I'm working very hard to be the person I think I should be.  I'm working hard to be the person I think others will approve of.  I'm working hard at working hard.

Maybe it's a process of maturing, but I'm starting to stop and ask myself: "is the whole point of being alive really to earn the approval of others?", or more pointedly "at what point do I just enjoy my life and stop trying to prove to my father that I'm worthy of his approval?"  My father hasn't said a word about me - positive or negative - since I was 22 years old (except to make joking comments to my husband about how "scary" I am).  He may still be thinking all the things that I still remember as painful and difficult, or he may not think about me at all (most likely - I'm distant enough not to affect his life much at all, so why would he think of me very often?).

But the point is, it doesn't matter to me (or it shouldn't matter to me) what he thinks of me.  The approval or disapproval of my father is completely irrelevant to my life at this point, and I'm old enough that continuing to try and be the kind of girl/woman that he would love is a waste of my own one precious life.  Somehow this post has veered into more Daddy Issues baggage than I meant it to - but hey, it's Father's Day tomorrow.

Anyway, back to Being Myself.  Inspiration comes from many sources, and a month ago I was reading an otherwise uninspiring magazine and there was this ad (I think for Birkenstocks, but I've searched online and can't find this ad again) that said "Be Yourself By Doing What You Love".  And, in one of those moments of a lightening bolt to the head that says "Duh!", I suddenly thought "that's how I can be true to myself, by just trusting that feeling that I'm loving what I'm doing for its own sake!".

It may be obvious to you, but to me this was a revelation.  In much the same way that a high school kid may pick an extracurricular activity because it will look good on their college applications, I sometimes pick things to do with my time because I imagine it will earn the approval of someone else.  Anyone else, actually, as I have a whole chorus of possible Judges that I can bring up in my imagination and then apply their critical eyes to myself and be found to be wanting.

But if I try to do something just because I Love It, because it brings me pleasure, and not for any other reason, the cumulative effect of time spent in that fashion would be that I would more uniquely Be Sara, and not some strange puppet being pulled by strings that make no sense and that no one else even sees.

The first application of this principle has been that I'm reading more.  I love to read - just for its own sake - and I love new ideas.  I mostly read non-fiction, because that happens to be what I love the most, but I also like fiction as well and I even like (gasp!) a trashy escapist romance novel every now and then.  I have no master plan for my reading, and I do have to stop desperately cleaning and working and trying to always be productive in order to give myself the time to read.  I also have to tear myself away from the easier time-sucks of facebook and television shows (which are more hypnotic but I can't honestly say that I "love"), to give myself the time to read.

I want to Be Sara.  I want to Do What I Love.  I only get to do this once, after all, so why waste the opportunity?

Simply Fun Learning

We went to the state Homeschool Convention today, and spent a few hours wandering the exhibit hall. I gave the kids each a budget to spend on "something educational" - and if you are wondering I did have to say no to some things that I didn't think counted, such as foam swords.

So they had a budget burning a hole in their pockets, and after we perused everything they decided to go back and spend their money at the Simply Fun booth.  They have a large line of games, varying in how much they are overtly "educational", and different from what you can buy elsewhere.  We bought two, brought them home and played them each a few times, and I can report that I don't regret the purchase.  The game pictured above is "Don't Wake the Dragon" and it's a dexterity game with tweezers to use to try and lift the lizards off the dragon without any eggs falling off.  Educational?  I can't really describe it as specifically educational, but it's fun.

The game below is "Chess on the Loose", which is chess with three options for crazy extras that add some elements of random luck to your chess game.  "Frankencheck" wanders around the board being guided by cards drawn from a draw pile, for instance, and if he lands on your piece it's captured.  Once again, I can't really claim it has huge educational value, but we had fun.

A Pattern Making Fail

It started off with a trip to the fabric store to let the kids pick out what they'd like for pajama fabric.  They've both been growing so much, they just don't have any pajamas anymore!

My kids have interesting taste right now, BTW.



Then Carbon told me he needed a new pair by tomorrow.  He has a sleepover tomorrow night, and he wants new pajamas for it.  I had to head into work tonight, so I really didn't have time - but I tried to squeeze it in between setting out dinner and heading to work.

And I Screwed It Up.  This is what I get for rushing it and not using a pattern.  These are cut like low rider hipster pants - except in kiddie print flannel with an elastic waist.  And if the fabric shrinks in the wash (I didn't prewash - no time!), they will have to get passed down to his sister.

A Big Fail.  Oh well, at least I tried.

Why can't the tooth fairy remind them to floss?

My dear son has big teeth.  The adult teeth that are coming in are too big, in fact, and so we are engaged in more dental work.  With my history of bad teeth, my children are doomed - and so is my budget since this means we support our local dentists with a lot of business.

Now he has a spacer placed in, and that means he needs to floss and make sure food doesn't get stuck in under the metal.  Every night I need to remember to ask if he remembered to do it.  Why can't my children each have their own little "nag fairy" that follows them around and reminds them to do things - or points out when they have left their dirty socks on the floor or not put their dishes in the dish washer?

A "nag fairy" would be wonderful.

A Busy Couple Days with the Animals

Today the boy and his dad took all six of our new goats into the vet for all their business to be dealt with.  They were too old when we got them for us to attend to the castrations ourselves (that and we've never done it before - that will be a real lesson for us all when we end up doing that someday).



And then we had a shipment of baby chicks arrive in the mail.



The kids are in love with the chicks!

I think this all counts as educational, as well.

Life As It Is

This week I learned that you cannot buy roses with their thorns still on.  All the roses for sale everywhere had been de-thorned, something I discovered on Saturday after I had planned our Bridging Ritual for high school seniors around the concept of giving them a rose with the thorns on "because we know we cannot protect you from the thorns of life anymore, but we're confident you are ready to deal with life as it is - the blooms and the thorns".

What to do if I couldn't find the roses with thorns?  Fortunately I did find four decent blooms on a rosebush in my garden, so we used my roses for the ritual.

This week I also supervised childcare for a huge memorial service for a young woman, one whose family has been part of our church since the daughters were teens.  It has been a deeply sad time for our congregation, and even though I did not know this adult daughter I felt the sadness and compassion in the air.

And then I was called upon to change several very dirty diapers, and as I performed that necessary task, I was struck by how incredibly life-affirming that felt.  Here is life, in all its mess and realism.

Life comes with many sides: blooms, thorns, sadness, compassion, messes, birth, death, love, loss, hope, despair.  Being part of a loving church community means more life, and more of a look at life as it is.

the challenge

This photo is of one of those wildly impractical inventions to accomplish a simple task - in this case Carbon was inventing a Rube Goldberg machine to butter toast.

I wonder how often I'm doing this without even realizing it - making life wildly impractical when it could be so simple.  The challenge that I face, to keep a lot of balls in the air and not crack under that pressure, sometimes feels very Rube Goldberg-like.

An illustration: yesterday I got up early and finished tweaking an article I was submitting to the local newspaper's faith perspectives column, then the kids woke up and I switched modes to making breakfast, supervising morning farm chores, and then doing a series of homeschool lessons and household chores until noon.

Then a trip the Farmer's Market where I needed to pick up my CSA and my mother-in-law's CSA - only they messed up and gave me my sister-in-law's instead.  So then a series of emails back and forth with my sister-in-law's roommate trying to sort that out.

 I needed to do the shopping for work, for the BBQ I was hosting for our teens last night, so I rushed through a store buying hamburgers and all that goes on them, then we all rushed home to pick up our legos and head over to lego club (which was all the way back on the other side of town).  We got there to find a note saying it was rescheduled for another day - which seriously upset the kids - but did mean I got a free hour in my day.

Back home we headed, which was good because then my mother-in-law called about picking up her dog from me (I dog-sit whenever her husband is out of town because she works too much to take care of a dog on her own).  So while I'm logging some much-needed planning time laying out next year's RE calendar, I'm also waiting for the dog-exchange to occur, and I'm texting back and forth with my husband at work about the logistics of the evening's baseball practice.  The dog is picked up, I load all the food and my grill into our truck, and pack up Carbon for an exchange of parents at baseball.  He has to take a motorcycle helmet with him, so his dad can pick him up.

 I drive him to practice, only it's not where we expect it to be.  We're standing there looking lost when another mom drives past and shouts from her truck that they've moved the practice under cover because the mud was too bad on the diamond.  So we jump back in the truck and drive around the block and I'm watching the clock because I cannot be late to work for this BBQ thing .... then I get Carbon there, drop off his backpack with the snack for the team in it, and the motorcycle helmet, and dash a text to my husband about where to find the practice since it moved ... and tell Carbon goodbye and that his dad will be there soon.

Then I rush to work, where I barely beat the first arrivals.  Teens start arriving, but the other adults are late, so I'm on my own for awhile, supervising teens (and trying to keep them quiet because there are people trying to meditate in the church sanctuary), and starting coals and laying out the food.  Then the cavalry arrives, including my own dear ones who made it safely over from the baseball practice, and my husband kindly takes over the burger flipping on the grill so I can deal with other aspects of the evening - such as the minister arriving to practice the Bridging speeches with the Seniors who will be speaking at the Sunday worship service.

It turns out that I know how to operate the sound booth in the sanctuary but the minister doesn't, so I ran tech for the practice, did a visioning and feedback exercise with all our teens, and then did a more specific planning meeting with the other adult advisors while the teens proceeded to put on an impromptu dance party in the youth room, my kids went off to play with the toys I keep stashed in my office at church, and my husband retired to my office with his work laptop to go log some overtime. Clean-up, load the grill and the kids and the left-over food into the truck, and we're headed home by 9:15pm, with the motorcycle following us home.

Was there a simpler way to do all that?  And, in this way of doing Life and Children and Work and Family, where does work start and end, and where does family start and end?