Today I’m spending $1600 on bookshelves. I have a wall – a large wall. This wall is simply crying out for adjustable shelving, well-anchored (because you know the minute the boys realize they can climb the shelves to get to the top ones, they will).
I’m participating in The Millionaire Mommy Next Door’s abundant life spending spree
Dear Babydaddies:
Thank you. Thank you for helping me make my beautiful babies. They are my greatest treasure, and my One True Reason for living.
Thank you for staying out of their lives. I know it sounds crappy to say it like that and I wish I could say it better but I don’t quite know how. You’re out of state and can rarely visit, and I want you to be more than a Disney Daddy to them.
(You know what a Disney Daddy is, right? The guy who shows up, spends the weekend with the kids at an amusement park, completely ignores all of Mommy’s Rules of Behavior and ultimately leaves the kids cranky/nauseous/disoriented and upset when you go back to your life and they’re stuck with the realitysmack.)
Thank you for everything you’re (not) doing.
The Millionaire Mommy Next Door Wants More Money, which is a concept I can definitely get behind. She says
For the next 30 days, I’ll open my mind to receive increasingly more money. On day one, I’ll decide how I’d like to spend $100. On day two, I’ll double that amount to $200. Day three, double again and I’ll have $400. And so on, doubling every day for the next 30 days. I’ll list how I’d like to spend every penny, with no repeating of items during my month-long spending spree.
I will, however, be repeating items occasionally – MMND has one child, I have three. Shopping for them is incredibly different, since the boys could quite cheerfully run around all day in boxerbriefs and a beater and my daughter could quite cheerfully run around bedecked in Hollister and PacSun.
So how would I spend $100 right now? Hair and feet, baby. I haven’t had a pedicure since I was pregnant with Daniel, and I’d dearly love to let my darling new stylist have free reign on my haircolor. Since I work with my hands so much, manicures are pretty much a waste of time. By the time my nails get long enough for me to say “Hmm, I should probably slap a coat of paint on these babies”, they break.
Wow, this IS going to be fun!
Jenn (Mommy Needs Coffee) has a thoughtful post up today about Shattered Vases. An antique, one-of-a-kind, absolutely irreplaceable vase smacks the floor with a crash and no matter how many hours you spend searching, sweeping, and gluing, the vase has a hole that can’t be repaired. And what if *you* are the vase? My answer was (I hope) pithy…
If you need to use the vase, you slap a piece of duct tape on both sides of the holes and turn that side to the wall.Conversely, you can take the shattered pieces of the vase, shatter them further, and use them to make a mosaic tile or plate. Then it will have a different function, but still be beautiful AND remind you of what was.
When you’ve had the wind knocked out of you, the instinct is to curl up into a ball and protect the rest of your body. The absolute last thing that you want to do (stand up straight) is the very thing that you MUST do to breathe again.
I can answer that way, because I was/am that vase. My move to Florida was the duct-tape repair, my move back to NC was the beginning of the mosaic tile. My perpetual WIP (work in progress). I like to pull the tile out and run my fingers over the surface, remembering how THIS crack was made and how jagged that edge was and how painful the wound was when I picked that piece up and gouged myself. There are still times when the ground shakes in my little world, and I pick the tile up and hold it close, protecting it and myself.
There were many times…there ARE many times when I wish there were someone here to help me complete the mosaic. It’s difficult work and time consuming. I have to stop working on it and attend to other things. Having someone else working on it would not only mean an earlier completion, but that my work would be less lonely.
The hardest part is taking a hammer to a large piece. It’s beautiful, and the pattern is still so vibrant in places – but shatter it I must, to fit it in the mosaic. Gently tapping, hoping there are no faults in the ceramic or hairline cracks through it, I do my best to preserve the pattern. It is these times when I’m glad I’m alone in this project. There’s no-one to blame but myself if it doesn’t turn out the way I wanted and expected it to. There’s no-one to take the credit if it turns out beautifully.
I wonder what to do with the smallest pieces. The anonymous specks of dust and sharp but blank shards of myself. Can I, SHOULD I do anything with these? They can always be mixed into the mortar, but would that inherently weaken the finished piece? I save them, will continue to save them, and hopefully an idea will strike, or a new method of binding them together will appear. It seems superfluous to hold onto them when I have so.many.pieces to work with, I know. Chalk it up to my “don’t throw that away, you might need it” upbringing.
Jenn also says:
As many times as I have been knocked down, beaten down and broken, never have I been shattered to a point where I can’t find a way to brush myself off. Partly because I have wanted to get through and move forward. What do you do when all you want to be is that damn vase before it shattered? What happens when you just cannot stop longing to be that pre-destroyed vase? What do you do when you know you can no longer be that damn vase because that piece is never, ever coming back to make it all work and for the love of god you don’t want to be anything else but that old vase? Forget new purpose and new meaning. You want the original to work.
And it doesn’t.
Then what?
I have pictures…I look at them and remember. Love and pain. Keening loss. Betrayal. Joy. I look more closely at the pictures, and I can see cracks in the vase that I didn’t notice at the time. Wishing that things had been differently, wondering how the vase got off the shelf in the first place. Knowing that the original was functional, but it can be made better, stronger.
They say that hindsight is 20/20, but what they don’t tell you is that you’re looking at it through the dewy star-lens of time – so it’s not REALLY clear sight.
Doesn’t he look so sweet with all his hair flying up in static electricity objection? He’s turned me into something I swore up and down I’d never consider becoming. Not even for a moment. Every time someone brought it up, I swore That Would Not Happen to Me Because I Would Put My Foot Down. Not me, not my kids – no way, no how.
He turned me into a short-order cook.
Mommy, I’m hungry. What can I have to eat?
Chicken noodle soup?
NO!
Chicken nuggets?
NO!
Hot dog?
NO!
Okay, what do you want to eat then?
I don’t know, what can I have?
Skettios without meatballs?
NO!
Pineapple chunks?
YES!!!!!
Okay, what do you want to eat WITH your pineapple chunks?
NOTHING!
Dan, you have to have something else. Chicken dinosaurs?
Chicken dinosaurs WITH KETCHUP! aaaaaaand koolaid!If you make something that's usually on the "acceptable" list but that he hasn't asked for, it WILL sit there uneaten until you wrap it up for the next day. He'll whiiiiiiiiiiiiiine about how hungry he is - with a plate full of food sitting in front of him. (It’s not what I want, Mommy!) There are times when you make what he asked for, and then he’ll say “I changed my mind” and not eat it. And then? I want him to eat, so I make something else. There are times when I’ve “tricked” him into eating. (Yeah, YOU try resisting when someone is standing in front of you eating “your” chicken noodle soup!!!)
I love that kid!
The downside of this whole affair, of course, is the input I get from my folks. Well, more specifically, my Mom. You can see that she’s fighting the urge to “jerk a knot in that boy” when she decides that
I’m not being attentive enoughhe needs to be fed but can’t quite seem to get there. There are times when he throws himself in the floor, crying real tears because she’s offended his sensibilities. (He does this regularly – he gets so frustrated that having a mini-tantrum/meltdown is the shortest way from point A to point B.)I know what you’re thinking – that he is One Spoiled Kid. That I should Instill Some Discipline, fix a plate, sit it down in front of him, and leave it there until he eats it.
Have you seen Mommie Dearest? More specifically – the scene where La Crawford serves a bloody-rare steak and Christina refuses to eat it? and it keeps getting served to her until it’s green with mold and naaaaaastay?
Yeah, I’m not the one to SERVE that to my kids, but My Boy is the kid that’d let it go moldy before he ate it.
I’m just sayin’…