more me, all the time

How odd is it that last night I was thinking that I could just take my facebook status updates and compile those and they'd give a pretty representative Annual Review for a Christmas letter, and then today I see that there is some facebook app that will compile a lot of your status updates into a "collage"? I thought that was pretty coincidental. But since I'm a sloth, once again, and not getting Christmas cards out, there's not even a letter to bother with. I really do want to send out some sort of card, though. Maybe I'll get ambitious and send out New Years or Valentines cards. (Do not hold your breath over this, though.)

Anyways, just because I think it is fun and what is a blog for if not for shameless self-promotion and navel-gazing...



(Click on it to see larger, then try "control +" or "command +" to make it large enough to read. This is all of course assuming you even bother looking at it.)

clutter

I am feeling overwhelmed by STUFF lately. Particularly kids' clothing. I don't know how to organize the outgrown stuff, what to save & what to give away/donate. Especially as they get older and the clothes show substantial wear, but still have a decent amount of wear left in them. For example, Noodle has outgrown her size 6 jeans, many of which we acquired secondhand (as handmedowns or from Savers), and they have knee patches, but now, with the knee patches, would be great for another girl to wear. But do I hold on to them for SEVEN YEARS? That seems a little ridiculous. So then I think, I'll just save the cutest or the ones in the best condition. Then I can't decide, and figure if I'm saving any, I might as well save them all, and I'm back to where I started. For being born a good 40+ years after the Great Depression, why the heck do I have so much angst about getting rid of stuff? Sigh.... I recently threw out some dollar store tableclothes that we'd bought for our Ichthoberfest party two years ago (and used). They were nice enough to reuse, but why did I hang on to them for so long? It would have been one thing if they'd have been in some designated spot, but they were just floating around from place to place.

I'm also the queen of repurposing. I use old containers for all sorts of things. I like the canisters from things for wrapping, we use peanut butter jars when we make freezer jam, we use empty cereal boxes for all sorts of crafts, large clear plastic containers for bug houses... It's hard for me to throw out anything that I can think of a reasonable re-use for.

But I'm tired of so much stuff around me. Papers. Projects. Books. Clothes. Toys. I feel like I really need to purge a lot of things. I don't know how to begin, or how to get over my "But what if I need it?" panics. Should I start with the stuff in the shed--the clothes and packed away toys? Then stuff that we DO want to keep that is cluttering the house can be moved out to the cleaned out shed. It seems like a good place to start. Maybe first I should try and get the office under control so I'll have a home base for sorting all this stuff out.

Obviously I'm thinking out loud here. Sometimes it'd be nice just to delete a certain trait and download an upgraded version!

As Pumba said...

"You've gotta put your behind in the past."

I had a very neat/odd experience a couple weeks back. I was perusing the facebook pages of some friends and saw a comment from a childhood friend of mine on another friend's page. At the time, I wasn't "FB friends" with the childhood friend, but I immediately sent her a friend request. Shortly after that, another childhood friend added me as a friend. On that day, so many memories started rushing through my mind, it was like someone had just opened the floodgates as old emotions and experiences came pouring out. So many things I hadn't thought about in 20 years. I was amazed that they were even still in my brain somewhere.

I don't know how other people remember their past, but I do know that for me, most of my experiences as a child and teenager are pretty fuzzy. I tend to remember them about the same as I remember movies that I've watched--often the emotion of the situation is not really there and I don't remember a lot of specifics. I wish I remembered a lot of the experiences more vividly, but I don't. I've wondered if part of it is that when I left for college I was really ready for a new start. I'd had a pretty great life up to that point, but hadn't really felt like I had discovered who I really was. I was ready to leave a lot of the old me (at least the me that had developed during adolescence) behind and become who I was truly meant to be. I think perhaps this conscious separation from my former self might have severed some of the connection to a lot of the memories. Plus, after leaving my hometown to come to BYU, I never returned for more than a week or so at a time, so I didn't have much chance to remind myself of the past. One time I went home, probably about 6 years after I'd left and I went to my old high school just to walk around. I felt so many old emotions and feelings come over me that it was almost frightening! It was certainly unnerving to have those thoughts and feelings come up unbidden.

Well, I've strayed from my original intent, which was to somehow address the uniqueness of experience and how we really do live in isolated realities, but this is getting somewhat lengthy so perhaps I'll save those thoughts for another day. But I am curious if anyone cares to share what memories are like for them and how vivid they are. I hope that in the next life we'll easily be able to recall our favorite experiences and get to feel the thrill again of some of the best days from various times in life.

so much to say...

so little time.

I've been wanting to blog about how much I've missed having my mom here this week, and how wonderful it was while she wase here. She kept up on dishes, laundry, did my mending (which was mostly all the knees on Noodle's pants...I guess that's what happens when you buy clothes for a six year old secondhand from Savers...), brought me glasses of water to keep me sufficiently hydrated, baked LOTS of cookies, held Sprout so I could shower/eat/homeschool/whatever, listened to me ramble about whatever, made me feel loved, and other fabulous things. My mom had a hip replaced last October (or maybe the very end of September) and so my dad was worried about her coming here. She still has to be careful about bending and lifting things. She brought her "grabber," which Spud thought was fabulous. He enthusiastically picked up toys with it on several occasions.

I've also wanted to blog that David's not very great job ended. They kept upping the requirements to make sales, and he wasn't able to meet the requirements (and neither were a lot of other folks) so that gig is over. He's working on a few other things and looking for other opportunities.

I've worked 30 hours each of the past two weeks. I'm grateful to have a job that I can do while nursing a baby. A lot of the time, one hand is sufficient. It would have been nice to take a break, but we can definitely use the money and I think keeping busy (while still being able to sit and "rest") is helpful to me to not get too down.

This week has been hard. Physically, I'm feeling pretty good, but have had some back and neck issues. Trying to balance everything is tough. Spud has had a bit of a rough adjustment to no longer being the baby of the family and we've had to deal with quite a lot of attitude, though I think he's done better this week than he did the previous few. Noodle has been a great help, though she is struggling with a challenge of her own right now (which I may or may not blog about in more detail later.) Anyways, we are in the process of getting some help with that.

We had our homeschool Valentine exchange/party on Monday, which was fun. The kids painted their boxes and wrote out their Valentines that morning. Next year I have aspirations of making homemade ones, but I think I had those aspirations for this year until Sprout arrived. :o)

Yesterday we went to the Harley-Davidson shop for a homeschool field trip. It was pretty awesome. The guy who gave us the tour was really cool and accommodating of our group of youngsters. (The bulk of our group is in the 4-8 range, which can be a bit daunting for tour givers.) I thought the kids were pretty attentive and well-behaved overall, so that was nice, too.

Oh, Noodle lost her bottom front incisors last weekend. They started wiggling back in December, I think, but she wasn't an avid wiggler so they hung on until recently. She was happy to be able to use my cute Tooth Pillow (made by my mom years ago for me) to put under her pillow. She made out like a bandit with $1/tooth! Whoo hoo! (It might not have been so much, except that she lost one Friday and the next one Saturday. I don't think the tooth fairy was aware the second was quite that loose!)

Well, I guess that's condensed version of Mindy's life lately. Just add water. Or milk, if you prefer a thicker consistency.

i dream of...

someday having a "style". Call it fashion sense or whatever, but I would love to have it someday. And I would love it to correspond with enough money to indulge it occasionally.

I see the people on this blog and think they look so put-together.

Till then, I'll maintain my jeans, tee shirt and sandals style. At least it's easy. And comfortable.

well, whaddaya know?

Last year I more than doubled the number of blog posts from each of the previous two years. Sure, many posts were just a video or a funny picture/link, and perhaps it's indicative of too much time spent online....but I'm still going to feel good about it, especially since it was a productive year in a lot of ways, so I feel okay with the evidence that I wasn't just frittering my life away at the computer. :o)

Super blogging fool, that's me.

Don't worry, though. I never forget this very important truth:

one month to go

Baby #3 is due one month from today. I have to say, in the midst of my excitement and anticipation, I'm a bit panicky and apprehensive. I feel like I've gotten the hang of being a two-kid family, and I've heard from many people that the adjustment to three kids is a big one because now the parents are outnumbered. Also, after having experienced two babies, I know that the newborn-infant stage is really demanding and really draining for me. After Spud was born, I had about four months of post-partum depression, and I can't help but feel a bit nervous about that possibility again. I like to think that I'm in a better environment and have more resources and supportive people now, but it was such a dark time in my life that I feel a bit anxious. That was one reason I really didn't want to have another winter baby, but sometimes things don't go exactly as planned. I'm really grateful that we are pretty set (since we've had one of each gender) as far as clothes and such go, and since we cloth diaper we won't have that expense, nor the expense of formula since we breastfeed, but boy it would be nice to be in a better financial situation.

Since I've been so busy this pregnancy (working, photography stuff, homeschooling...) I don't feel like I've had a lot of time to absorb the reality or focus on welcoming this new baby to our home. Of course I was busy during my pregnancies with the other two (finishing grad school right up until the end with Spud), but I've just felt especially distracted and stretched thin these past several months. And that makes me more nervous about the possibility of the PPD--I don't feel like I'm emotionally prepared. Of course, I'm guessing part of the "lack of focus" just comes with the territory of having multiple children. You have so much going on that you just have to keep doing what needs to be done.

So, yeah. How's that for a fair amount of angst? In spite of all my concerns, I am very excited to meet this little person. I hope that when s/he arrives, we'll be able to quickly settle on a name! Nothing has really settled or seemed quite right just yet, which is also different from the other two. A few of the names that I rather like have gotten rather popular, and I try to avoid anything in the top 100. I think maybe I need to ask David for a blessing and also just spend some time visualizing my "new" life as a mother of three. It might be enough to help me feel a bit more stable and prepared emotionally.

i am my mother's daughter

I needed elastic to finish up Noodle's pajama pants for Christmas, so I went to JoAnns Fabrics today. We thought it would be quick, so I just ran in while David and the kids waited in the car. They were COMPLETELY out of pre-cut elastic, but fortunately had some that you can get cut at the cutting table. Unfortunately, you have to take a number and wait in line. My number was 25 and they were on 19, so I had a few minutes to kill. (Oh, I failed to share the story of how I took the kids to JoAnns on Black Friday. My number was 68, I think, and they were in the 30s. Only a bit later I found out they were on H30-something, and I was I-68. We were there for three hours! To keep the kids happy, we hid things among the fabric and had "treasure hunts," and also wadded up ads and played basketball with a shopping basket. I was amazed that we made it through with our sanity relatively intact. And all for super cheap flannel.) Anyways, I decided to spent my time waiting today looking at the remnants bin, and what do you know, they were 75% off the regular price. Normally remnants are 50% off the "standard" price, so they were an additional half off of that low price. Yippee!! I couldn't resist and bought three different pieces. One for a Christmas gift for my SIL, one for a superhero cape for Spud, and one for some future cool craft. All that, plus the elastic for less than $7. Yay!

So, yeah, I don't know what it says about me that my favorite places to shop lately are JoAnns, Savers & D.I. I guess it's just a different manifestation of my mom's love of garage sale-ing. (Which I do love, too, but it's harder to get out and do with the kids.)

sometimes it hits me

I really am a grown-up. I am coordinating with my friend who is a co-director of a preschool/learning center to be the photographer for their pictures next month and I had that feeling of, "Huh, I must be a grown-up," wash over me. Obviously plenty of other things in life should make me constantly aware of that, but sometimes weird things trigger the sensation. Perhaps because taking pictures of kids reminds me of being a kid and getting my picture taken, and how "adult" the photographers were. I guess that's me now.

me.

So, being a photographer has done odd things to my perception of my self. I've never been one who enjoyed seeing myself in photos. I would get really excited when I saw a photo that I looked good in, especially as they seemed to be so rare. My wedding day was one of my best photo days ever. I like nearly all of my wedding pictures. Since motherhood, though, and the ensuing frequent days/weeks on end where I apply little to no makeup, I've found that I struggle to enjoy my own appearance. Now that I'm hours away from turning 30, I can't help but ponder how I will continue to feel about myself and my appearance. I think I'm okay looking, but 99% of the time, when I see photos of myself, I just go, "Crap. I thought I looked better." The hormones of motherhood have not been the most friendly to my skin, and I feel it's nature's cruel joke that I had less than half a dozen zits all through adolescence, but in my late 20s they all seem to have caught up with me (though it is better than it used to be). I'm also feeling a real need to find a new hairstyle. This picture captures a rare sight--me with my hair down. I keep reading on "hairstyle" websites that if you have an oval face you can pull off any 'do. I thought my face was rather oval, but the way my long hair seems to stretch it out makes me think that perhaps it isn't the right 'do for me. I think my features look best when my hair is away from my face, which is why I wear it up almost all of the time. Well, that and the fact that blowdrying my hair is right up there with, oh I dunno, something dreadfully tedious.

Anyways, I took a whole bunch of random pictures of myself on Sunday, then proceeded to play around in photoshop. So this is me, slightly enhanced & without color.

smells...

My mom brought me a bunch of extra pillowcases and some sheets that she had lying around at home. They smell just like my mom's linen closet, which is one of my all-time favorite smells in the world. It's some sort of combination of line-dried laundry, a variety of soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, and laundry detergents all combining together and having co-mingled for the past three and a half decades, resulting in the sweet, fresh smell of Home. (My mom has never been too tied to a particular brand of anything, whether toothpaste, shampoo, lotion, detergent, etc. Rather, she is a super sale watcher, and would stock up on whatever was on sale. It was always interesting to visit the Closet to find something to use. Of course, once I reached teenage years, I'd often buy my own shampoo so I could fit in with the teen trends. I remember Salon Selectives, in their hot pink bottles, were a popular choice and particular favorite of mine.)

I wish I could somehow package the smell and transfer it to my own linen closet, but I'm not sure that's possible. Maybe if I clean out my closet then put all of these sheets and pillowcases in there, some of the smell might permeate and linger.

Other favorite smells of mine are mint fields, lilac and skunk. There were mint fields not too far from where we lived growing up and when we'd drive past them, I couldn't drink in enough of the smell. It will always be the perfect smell of summer to me. Lilacs probably go without explanation, but they my all-time favorite flower scent. Skunk is one of those pungent aromas that can be unpleasant if too powerful, but I love the smell on crisp, cool air. The nose-tingling sensation makes me feel more alive. Noodle has come to like the smell of skunk, too, or so she claims.

days of clarity

I woke up this morning, not too early, but earlier than I have been waking up, and David was already on his way up to SLC for a class. I spent some time going through our iTunes songs and improving our "DANCE!" playlist, and also tried to buy a song from iTunes featured on Dan in Real Life, which we watched last night. (But for some reason my iTunes account isn't working, which is driving me nuts because I really want to buy this song, and I want it now, dang it!) Anyways, I was really enjoying listening to music and having some time to myself, and the kids slept until about 8 o'clock, so I had about an hour. For some reason, the combination of quiet time alone and finally not having a head that is full of congestion has combined to give me a wonderful day of clarity. I finished reading an article How to Learn and Why, and my brain feels great and all attuned to the order of the universe. It's days like this that make me long for my graduate school days, when at least I felt like it was easier to fill my brain with knowledge when it was ready to receive it. Of course, many days were spent trying to force knowledge and learning into a less-than-ready mind, but I still loved the idea of learning and discussing what I learned.

Lately I'm really coveting the Great Books of the Western World series. I just want to own that collection of wisdom, so that when I have these times of full brain power, as well as a day without anything particularly urgent to do, I can read a classic. It's just a bit more convenient than getting them at the library. Of course, we do have some great books (though not "Great Books") here already, and I guess I should just read those while I'm waiting to have a few hundred extra dollars lying around.

Anyways, here's to being human again! May I make the most of it!

new colors

I decided my blog was ready for a facelift. When I saw this clouds template, I was delighted! Clouds are one of my absolute favorite things. I still have a dream of painting my bedroom sky blue with clouds on the ceiling. I even had a friend paint clouds on my generic navy blue luggage. And BOY was I grateful for those clouds when I had to pick my luggage out of a lineup of several hundred pieces (a bunch of flights were delayed out of Chicago due to storms, and they'd just been lining up luggage all day).

Oh, and by the way, Happy Leap Day!

ahhhh love...

Katie tagged me, and since I was bored this morning, I thought I might as well do it.

What is your Hubby's name?: David. And he prefers to be called David, not Dave, but he still answers to Dave.

How long have you been together? How long did you date?: Our first date was Saturday, November 11th, 2000. Prior to that, we'd already spent two weeks together nearly 24/7. And we'd already smooched a fair bit, too. (What can I say, it was jungle love?)

Who said I love you first?: He did. I think it was not too long after we'd returned from Brazil.

Who is smarter?: Hmmm. I'm a better "student," but he is by far a better problem-solver.

Who does the housework?: Me. But he cooks dinner the vast majority of the time. (I just started cooking dinner 2x/week, but he's done 99.9% of the dinners for the last almost 7 years.)

Who sleeps on the right?: If you are facing the bed, me. If you are in the bed, then it's him.

Who pays the bills?: Generally me, but for right now while we get some things in order, him.

Who cooks dinner?: Him, most of the time. Me, 2x/week. (Yes, I know I'm super lucky with this!)

Who drives when you are together?: He usually does. Sometimes, though, when I have the car and pick him up from work, I stay behind the wheel if I want to.

Who is more stubborn?: It's a toss-up. We are both pretty darn stubborn.

Who kissed who first?: David kissed me first. It was soooo sneaky. We were sailing down the Amazon River in the middle of the night, looking up at the stars. I was sitting in front of him and he had his arms around me to keep me warm. And he kissed the back of my neck. At first I wasn't even sure what was happening. When I turned around to say "Hey?!" he kissed me on the lips! What nerve!

Who asked who out first?: He asked me out. We went and watched "The Fiddler on the Roof," at Jordan Commons.

<Who proposed?: He did. He flew me to San Francisco for my birthday weekend and proposed to me on the "beach" next to the Golden Gate Bridge. I gave him his ring that same weekend. I'd tied the box to the neck of a stuffed toy sloth (his favorite animal) and hung the sloth in the sequoia forest we visited.

Who has more siblings?: Same. He's the oldest of six and I'm the youngest of six. And both families have 3 boys and 3 girls. And both families have a David and an Eric.

Who wears the pants?: Well, we like to tell the kids that I'm in charge, but I think we have a good balance of power.

I tag: Andrea, Debra, Kristin & Karen

happy holidays...

It's been a nice, vacation-y week. Tonight was my mom's surprise party for her 70th birthday, which I have been planning for a few months, and it went off very nicely. The book I put together for her of photos and memories from siblings, spouse, children & grandchildren was a huge success. Mom was very appreciative, which was the most rewarding of all. I'll post some photos later on.

We watched the movie Waitress tonight. I'd heard/read about it a few times, but didn't know much about it besides that it somewhat chronicled a pregnancy. It was a very good movie. It was gritty (a word overused in movie reviews, methinks, but entirely appropriate here) and real. Even if they make me squirm at times, I have a hard time not liking real movies that reveal the messiness of the human experience. A couple of other movies that I think merit such distinction are As Good as it Gets and Real Women Have Curves. There are others, too.

I gave my mom the boxed set of Stargirl and Love, Stargirl for Christmas, simply because the former is one of my all-time favorite books, and I wanted to share it with her. (I've not yet read the latter.) She told me that she read it and loved it, and that it really makes you think. It was odd how thrilled I was to hear this. I can't quite explain it, but I feel like the story of Stargirl is in some way my own story, or the story I wish I could have written about who I was growing up. I very often felt separate and apart from the group, while simultaneously never doing anything that didn't seem to be what everyone else did. That, of course, is the exact opposite of Stargirl. Perhaps it is better said that I felt my true self was someone like Stargirl. The story really resonates with me for myriad reasons. When she said she liked the book, it felt like some sort of bridge of added understanding between us. I've always had a good relationship with my mom, but in the past couple of years I have felt a stronger bond drawing me to her than ever before.

On a final note of late-night reflection, I have come to realize that I definitely suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think I don't like to face the fact, because it is one of those "trendy" things that everyone and their dog seems to suffer from, but I am hoping that acknowledging it in my own mind will be motivation to pursue a course of activity to mitigate its effects. This past month it has been a real battle to get out of bed most days, and I think it is the toll of facing gray, cold weather day after day that really saps my energy. I am very grateful that we have passed the Winter Solstice, though, and that shorter nights, longer days and SPRING are in our future. I would definitely have been all for celebrating with the druids the return of more light. "Oh thank you, Sun, for not burning out and abandoning us to a cold, miserable death!" (Hey, Andrea, I guess I have a bit of drama in me, too!)

clouds

I love clouds. And I love cloud-printed stuff. One day, when I was single and interning in D.C. and had recently been dumped by the guy I thought I was going to marry, I was hanging out behind the Smithsonian being introspective and depressed and all that, and I looked up and the sky was filled with the most amazing clouds. I can't remember exactly what they looked like, but it was one of those moments when you feel like God and the universe are mindful of you and, more than that, actually care about you.

This afternoon before I made dinner, I went outside and looked up and saw this:

It stretched from horizon to horizon. Pretty incredible.

envy

Not the Ben Stiller/Jack Black movie, which I love and own, but rather the green monster that occasionally rears its ugly head in my soul. What is the cause? I have blog envy. My friend reminded me about this blog, and I guess she is one of the most read bloggers on the internet, and while I have no aspirations to be some sort of a super blogger, I find myself irrationally jealous of people who have well-trafficked blogs.

To that end, muchas smooches to the few visitors I get on occasion! I certainly get a cheap thrill everytime I get a new comment.

I need to get out more.

happy day!

David came home from TN today! He flew out Thursday morning (early!) and the reason I didn't mention this earlier is because I was afraid some crazy stalker would find out and harass me while he was gone. Not very likely, I'm sure, considering I think there are maybe 6 people who read my blog, but I tend to get a bit paranoid when he's gone. Last night Daisy barked at what I'm pretty sure was nothing outside and it sent me into a door-locking frenzy. Which was good, as I needed to lock the doors anyways, but I hate that panicky "Who's there?" feeling.

So I just spent some time reading my dear friend and former college roommate Andrea's blog, and it made me really happy to read all about her and her cute family. But it also made me aware that something is missing from my own mothering, and I hope I can find a way of recapturing that. Andrea is one of the funnest people I know, and honestly, I used to be the other most fun person that I know. But I don't feel much like that same person anymore. I think Ive let some of the stresses of life get me down, and I don't know how to shake it sometimes. There is so much joy to be had and shared with those we love, but sometimes it feels so elusive. It's definitely something to think about and work on.