Sleepovers, Service, Suess, & Spa…all on a Saturday

What do these thing have in common?  Well, they’re my schedule for this weekend.  Last night Alisha finally had a sleepover for her 13th birthday (which was Jan. 10th…parent of the year candidate, right here.)  She had 4 girls over, and 3 of them are still here (update- 2 more left during the writing of this post.)   They’re currently singing “When She Loved Me” from Toy Story II with the Disney Sing It wii game.  There’s some really high notes in that song!  I think fun was had.  I hung in until 11pm and then fell asleep on the couch reading.  Take out from Olive Garden and Pizza Hut last night, and pancakes and bacon for breakfast means I actually didn’t mind since there wasn’t much to do.  Easy stuff.

The service isn’t actually me serving, but Marissa and Rebekah.  I haven’t really ever talked about how much I admire the character my girls have, but I do.  And for the record, it has nothing to do with us or our parenting skills!! It’s only by God’s grace any of us turn out ok.   Every year my two oldest daughters take part in the 30 hour famine.  Funny thing is we’ve never attended a church that participates.  One of their friend’s churches does, so they go there.  It’s a good church, but pretty far away from our house.  Basically the kids fast from food and technology for 30 hours and spend that time in individual and small group study of the Bible, and doing community service projects.  I’m so proud of them for wanting to be part of something like this.  The fast ends with a huge spaghetti dinner tonight.

In the meantime while I wait for them to need to be picked up, I’ll be helping a friend host a birthday party for her 10 year old daughter.  It’s a glam/spa party theme and I am the manicurist.  Yep. That should be interesting.  I volunteered since I somehow have to justify the fact that I’m an OPI snob who rarely ever does her nails!  My latest color is Mermaids Tears which my family declared “ugly” but I thought was fun and kicky.  I even put a silver stripe on them.  Hopefully these 10 year olds aren’t expecting much.  I can do stripes and maybe dots as far as nail art goes.  It’ll be fun!  Not as much fun as if I were going to a spa by myself, but one can always dream.

Dr. Suess’ birthday is this week!  His name is actually Theadore Suess Geisel and he’s most famous for authoring children’s books, his most famous being The Cat in the Hat.  It’s always funny to me that my students think the Cat is the author.  Every year I have to go through teaching them about Dr. Geisel.  His birthday usually sneaks up on me and we don’t have time to properly celebrate with activities in PreK…like eating green eggs and ham for snack!  This year I remembered in time!  My lesson plans will take longer, but we’ll have a lot more fun this week It’s also going to be the Jewish holiday of Purim next week, so I’ll be teaching one of my favorite Bible stories, Queen Esther.  This week is looking to be a good one!

What does your weekend look like?  Do you tend to pack a ton of stuff in your weekend or stay home and relax?

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Well folks you’re in for a treat.  It’s taken over half the school year, but my students are finally getting funny.  Maybe it’s just that for the first half of the year I didn’t have a sense of humor, but I think it’s more likely that my little crew of Pre-Kindergarteners are finally growing up a bit.  This particular group is different from any other class I’ve had in all the years I’ve been teaching.  They are definitely more challenging, and I find it hard to hear the humor in the things they say.  Of course one of them speaks very little English, and another doesn’t speak any.  They could be saying hilarious things in Vietnamese and I just don’t know it.

As of late they’ve come up with a few funny sayings and like other years I have sticky notes with the scribbled funny sayings in a folder.  Thanks to my scheduled endoscopy tomorrow, I find myself with the time to write, and on a Tuesday night (since I don’t have to get up at dark thirty!)   So, without further ado, enjoy this edition of Tiny Talk Tuesday.

• One day during seat work time (around Christmas time) one of the boys was singing to himself while he colored. “Frosting the snowman was a very jolly man.  Frosting the snowman was a very jolly man…”  He sang that one line over and over again.  I guess that’s the only line he knew.
•  Sometimes I’ll put shaving cream on a tray for them to practice writing in.  One little girls was playing in the shaving cream and said, “It’s squishy like mushrooms!” 
• Sometimes the Kindergarteners visit my room for centers, and one such morning a previous student of mine said, “Mrs. Mongold, my brain is funny if I wear it on top of my head.” 
• When a student has a birthday it’s always a big deal, and there is much conversation about their upcoming parties.  D told me, “There’s gonna be a CLOWN at my party!! You know what kind of face he’s gonna paint me?!? A bat!!”  I love that they talk backwards…and that I totally understand what they’re saying since I speak the same way.
• We had been learning about telling sentences and how they end in a period.  During library time one day a little guy brought his story book to me and asked, ”What’s an upside down i mean?”  (an exclamation point) Another student told me during reading circle it was called an “explanation point.” 
• We’ve also been discussing question marks in class, and when I asked the class if they knew what the curvy mark at the end of the sentence was called, one boy answered, “A mystery.”  Another day a little girl brought me her book during library time and pointed to a question mark and said, “Look, it’s an answer!”
• When the children bring back their completed homework, they get one smartie from my candy jar.  After Valentine’s Day I mixed the extra conversation hearts in the jar.  One little boy got his candy for bringing his homework back and as he was walking away from my desk he said, “Why won’t this candy bite?”  I did laugh out loud at that one.  I guess the hearts are much harder to chew.

Apparently I had way more sticky notes than I thought!  I have enough for another Tiny Talk Tuesday, so I’ll save them for next time.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Holding Pattern

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m waiting for something.  I mean, I’m always waiting for something…actually someone…to get done with something (school, rehearsal, meetings, etc.)   You can usually find me waiting in my minivan with a book and some coffee.  The waiting is not as painful that way.  But this new feeling of waiting is strange because I don’t know what it is I’m waiting for.  Change maybe. I’m not sure…just something.  I don’t even know what change would be on the horizon.  The surprise kind I suppose, and sometimes those can be scary.

I’m in a holding pattern.  Just going in the same circles waiting for whatever. Most of the time I’m ok with this new feeling, but today, honestly, it’s got me down.  I’m tired.  Physically, emotionally…just drained.  I’ve not made any secret of the fact that I struggle with chronic depression, but I’ve also not really written about it here.  Every two months it seems I cycle into a downward spiral that makes it tough to get through the day.  I blame it on crazy hormones!  This time I haven’t been able to bounce back as quickly and the doctor added some new medication to my regiment.  The first few days I was on it, it felt like what I would imagine it’s like to take speed. I was on!  I hardly needed to sleep and I was WAY motivated.  After a month of feeling unmotivated to even get up in the morning, this was pretty cool.  Now that my body is adjusting to the meds, I’m more evened out, but today I just didn’t want to leave my bed (or Pinterest!)

I often wonder if there are other people, particularly Christians, who struggle with this.  I have nothing to be sad about. My life is ridiculously blessed and I know it.  So how does one explain a “sickness” that you can’t really “see”.  Especially to friends and family who clearly know you’re just not yourself.  I’m just curious to know how you guys get out of a slump.  I get prayer, reading your Bible, etc…all the spiritual stuff.  That’s a given.  I’m talking the practical, real to life stuff.

What do you do to get yourself out of  a funk?

 

9 minutes

I have exactly 9 minutes to give you an update: (good luck reading this post!)

Today is Bekah’s 16th birthday.  We’re going to a friend’s 40th birthday party tonight after we stop at Best Buy and Ulta.  Today in school, one kid peed his pants in the play area, another had a bloody nose, and we had a dance party with glow sticks in the dark (well, as dark as my classroom gets.)  At least the last part was fun.  Phil is sleeping on the couch for the 9 minutes we have before we have to leave.  Today for some reason my girls all of the sudden decided French braids are cool.  They’re barking up the wrong tree if they think I can help them!  I can barely do my own hair.  My past two haircuts have been the best I’ve ever had.  For real.  I had a gift card otherwise there is no way I can justify $50 for a haircut!  But really, in the 8 weeks between those cuts, I didn’t have one bad hair day, and I’ve not had so many hair complements since the day I went bleach blonde.  I will not do that again.  Ever.  I am not blonde.  Yesterday I gave my students gum.  It was for a very long project we’d been working on.  I really want to share it with you, but time is running out. Maybe this weekend.  Three day weekend!  Thanks to President’s Day.  Also, next week I’m having and edoscopy (good times) and so I had to take 2 days off (one for the procedure, one cause I’m a wimp)  so really, I only have to work 2 days out of the next 9 days.  Put that way, it almost sounds like a vacation.  Although for part of that I’ll be under anesthesia. I have about 15 posts floating around my brain.  I wonder if I’ll ever get a nice chunk of time to write?  The beginning of the year my students weren’t really saying anything funny.  They are a tough group, this year’s bunch, but the past few weeks they’ve had some good ones.  I’ve been taking notes, so a Tiny Talk Tuesday is in the works.  Can you believe I have two kids who could legally drive if I’d get my butt in gear and teach them?!?  I can’t.  If I had lots of money I’d just send them both to driving school.  I wish I had lots of money.  With that said…it’s time to wake Phil from his nap and start the next phase of our constant running.  Well, I hope you enjoyed my 9 minutes.

 

Family Happenings

It’s 32 and sunny with a light dusting of snow on the ground that fell through the night.  My husband just left to run (literally) to the car dealership about a mile and a half away to pick up my van.  It’s fixed: again.  This time they are charging us, which really isn’t fair since there were NO problems with it before they took the engine out to replace something-or-other-engine related 2 weeks ago. Since then two things have gone wrong and needed fixed.  Whatever.  Phil respectfully argued the point with them and they blamed it on the age of the vehicle. Riiiiight.

Anyway.  He didn’t ask ME to drive him there in his car since we’re ALL about ‘fair’ in this family, and I had to get up at 6:45 on a Saturday morning to get Bekah and her friend to the high school to catch the bus to their ISSMA choir competition.  Also, last night after we tried out a new Mexican restaurant near our house, we needed to run to Old Navy to get a nice outfit for Bekah to wear to the competition since her standard uniform for life is jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt.  Phil had us drop him home first.  Meaning I had to take Alisha and Rebekah clothes shopping myself.  I say, share the pain.  However, he did not agree.  So…he is running this morning.  Not because I made him, because he just knows.

Wow…our family is exciting, no?  We also pulled off one of our normal family dinners by leaving not enough time for an actual sit-down restaurant meal when Marissa needed to be dropped off at church for a youth outreach.  They were going to Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago to hand out hats, gloves, blankets, and sandwiches to the homeless.  We ordered our food, then she and Phil inhaled it, then he left to take her to the church while the other girls and I finished our meal.  What was funny about the scenario this time (yes, this is not the first time this has happened) was that it’s a new restaurant, and as soon as they stood up to leave, the wait-staff noticing we still had a lot of food on our table, rushed over, “Is everything ok, sir?  Is there something wrong with your meals?”  They were quite concerned.  I had to laugh at them since they looked devastated.  We explained and then it was fine.

Update: Phil made it home.  He’s mad about the cost of the car repair, but he survived his frigid jog.

Back to the shopping.  Bekah chose a really cute outfit for her choir competition today.  I’d give you a link, but the skirt is not on the Old Navy site.  Which is weird since it was yesterday.  Alisha got a cute shirt, and I got a fleece top that goes with my fleece pj pants for $2.99. Score!  Old Navy stuff is too often trendy, and doesn’t hold up well, but it’s cheap and cheap is what I’m all about these days.

While I’m on the topic of money, we have an opportunity to live it up tonight!  All 3 girls are going to sleepover at one of the youth leaders homes.  But we will not be doing anything other than going to church and back home to catch up on dvr’d episodes (so, so sad that Chuck is over    See, with the dinner out last night, the shopping at Old Navy, the money Bekah needed for lunch at ISSMA today, the van repair, and the money needed to give the girls for dinner and a movie tonight, there is none left for us.  Opportunity or not, it’s all about the bottom line sometimes.  In full disclosure, I spent quite a lot of money this week myself on things I wanted and didn’t need.

Blame it on the coupons and the jeans!  I got the Ulta coupon for 20% off in the mail.  Not that one that excludes 90% of the products in the store, but the one good on almost everything.  I’ve developed a love for Benefit Cosmetics eye shadow and over the past 6 months or so when I get this great coupon, I’ve expanded my collection (for the super curious, I have get figgy, strut, and birthday suit.)  You remember this story about choosing my new eyeshadow color while blinded?  Yeah, that was spending spree #1.  I’ve also fallen in love, yes, love, with a brand of jeans.   When I, the one with a ridiculously horrible self-body image, and low self-esteem can look in the mirror and say, “Man, my butt looks good!”  you buy those jeans.  Cost is really not an issue at this point.  I’ll share my secret with you since a friend told me about them, and I’m all about sharing the love.  The brand is Hydraulic and I get mine at Macy’s (my favorites are the Lilly Slim Straight which aren’t even on their website.)  I’m not sure if they have them in skinny person sizes since I’m not skinny and mine come from the “women’s” section.  They start at 14w and go up.  And they are the bomb.  The bomb I tell you!  I bought two more pairs this week (on sale of course!) since now that I’ve found the unicorn of denim I’m so afraid they will be gone or discontinued or what have you.  This was spending spree #2.

Since I’ve got some awesome new jeans, I needed awesome boots to wear with said jeans.  This is a problem since my favorite tall, black boots have seen better days.  They’re Anne Klein, but they were hand-me-downs which I’ve been wearing for the past 6 years or so.  I’ve been looking to replace them and haven’t found anything I like.  I did find these which are nice and the same shape and style as mine, but mine have neat, white stitching on them, and I still like them better.  And for that price?  I’d better love the new ones!  I decided to try a shoe repair store.  One place told me to just get some new ones, that they were beyond hope.  Another store told me, “40 dollar. I mae lie new.”  A cute, little, older Asian man owns the shop.  He is now supposedly working miracles on my boots.  We shall see.  That was spending spree #3.  So, as you can see, the money has run through my fingers like sand at the seashore this week.  I’m curious…

What do you consider a “spending spree” or what is your weakness when it comes to shopping?

Past My Bedtime

It’s late.  When I decide to write when it’s late and I’m tired…? Well, let’s just say I can barely converse with my family when I’m tired.  Case in point: after running to the grocery store with the girls after school to get the needed ingredients so I could actually make a real dinner (as opposed to cereal and milk) we got home and realized the dog was out of food.  I called Phil at work to find out what kind of food we get for the dog, since that’s “his” job.  He told me we discussed it last evening.  I have no recollection of that discussion.  Nor of us speaking at all.  In my defense, yesterday was long.

I really just wanted to give you all a quick update.  My dad was released from the hospital today and both things they were concerned about (his heart and gall bladder) are fine.  They’ll continue to watch him and do some tests, but he’s home and resting.

I saw the eye guy today.  It was like yesterday…only way more intense.  If you’re at all squeamish about eye stuff, you might want to stop reading now.  My eyes had to be dilated again, and besides the normal tests you have done at the eye doctor, I got my corneas measured.  Wonder how they do that?  Oh, let me tell you!  They numb your eyes with drops (very weird feeling) and then take something that looks like a digital thermometer and place it right on your eyeball.  Yes, that’s right…ON your eyeball.  Then it beeps for a few seconds and they do the other eye.  I was extra special today since I got to have it done not once, but twice!  Special.  I guess the doctor wanted to make sure the readings were what he thought they were.  The outcome is that the weird pulsing in my eye has no real explanation.  He did say that there are some things he sees that could become a problem later in life (he mentioned glaucoma) and wants to see me again in 6 months.  All in all it wasn’t that bad.  The eye stuff, while annoying and slightly uncomfortable never hurts, so I’m cool with that.  The whole driving with dilated eyes thing again was the worst part.  Such is life when you’re the head of transportation in the family.

Wow…look at that. Past my bedtime and I managed to string some words together!  Rest well, my friends.

The Awesome

Today has been simply awesome.  And since sarcasm doesn’t translate very well into written word, I’ll just tell it to you plain…today was not AT ALL awesome.  Today was long and hard and I’m tired.  So much for keeping the Sunny Side positive, eh?  I’ll get to the positives by the end of this post, I promise.  But for now, let me walk you through my day.

My stomach was feeling a little off today and by the time recess rolled around I was literally laying on the floor in the play area praying a wild group of preschoolers would just run me over and put me out of my misery.  Alas, all that happened was much running and therefore time-outs because the running leads to bumping into others which leads to bloody noses and bumped heads.  You get the picture.  When the K teacher came for recess she informed me that one of her students was losing his breakfast all over her classroom this morning and another had a fever.  Great.  I’m hoping whatever germ has afflicted me is NOT the same stomach bug germ that’s going around.  The one clue that all is not right with me is that I only had one cup of coffee this morning.  My thermos and travel mug went completely untouched at work.  What a waste of precious caffeine!  I thought it best to not push things and stuck with tea and water.

After work all I wanted to do was go lay down, but I had an eye doctor appointment.  Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I’ve been having some eye weirdness going on and felt it prudent to get it checked out.  Long story short: I have to see the next level of eye doctor (an opthamologist) and ended up with crazy dilated eyes for hours.  Four and a half hours later and I’m still seeing things fuzzy.  Also, if I get an “extremely bad headache” I’m to go to the ER because that would be considered and emergency.  Ok then.  Not sure what’s up with my eye, but I’m not worried.  I’ll keep you posted though.  Here comes the positive spin…get ready for it…

What can you possibly do when your eyes are dilated and it happens to be a sunny day in NWI?  Well, continue with your errands of course!  I went to the teacher supply store where a nice young man had to read the labels on packages for me, and to Ulta where I trust the blurry, young lady grabbed the correct shade of eyeshadow for me since you know, I couldn’t SEE.  And here’s the best part: I still had to pick the kids up from school (navigating the school pick up line is tough with 20/20 eyesight on a cloudy day!)  and get us all to the dentist for our annual cleanings.  Oh yeah…the fun never stops.  As I was sitting in the dentist’ chair thinking (still with my sunglasses on) about what a crappy day it was and, “Dear Lord, please don’t let my gag reflex kick in…my stomach it’s still not feeling so hot.”  I realized that this was actually not a bad place to be!  I sat there letting my eyes rest for 35 minutes.  I didn’t have to think, just open, close, and swish when told.  See, the positive.  Between the four of us, there are 6 cavities. Not sure how to put a positive spin on that.

Here’s some more positives for you.  I made it.  The kids ate (thanks Chik fil a) and we got home safely.  I am typing this from the comfort of my bed and in my fleece pjs.  God is good!  I did not toss my cookies at the dentist or anywhere else, and while I feel like someone has sucked all the energy out of my body, my fingers and brain are still working just fine.  I’m looking forward to a trip to the kitchen for some tea and toast as soon as I get some energy back.

As a side note, my dad called last night and is in the hospital with chest pain.  Prayers would be greatly appreciated.  I’m going to keep fighting to see the positive in things, even if it takes me typing a million words to do it!

To go out on an even better note, I remember this clip from Brian Regan. Hilarious!

 

Millions of Words

Apparently yesterday’s writing and posting of a new blog post after so many months of not opened a veritable floodgate of words that have been stored in my head.  I’m having trouble pinning them down into groups that make sense.  Speaking of pinning and groups, have you been on Pinterest yet?  If you tend to be at all obsessive as I am, I would avoid it. I knew what it was, and for months I avoided it, then while on vacation visiting a friend in Philadelphia I caved.  Now it’s my new favorite time sucker and mind numbing waste of time.  You can see my boards here if you so desire.  In defense of Pinterest, I have gotten quite a few ideas that I’ve used in my classroom.  And many more that are pipe dreams.

During my hiatus from writing I didn’t exactly use all my time wisely.  I think the distance from social media helped me to be more mentally in the moment when I was with my family or friends, but in my down time I was as foolish as ever.  Besides Pinterest I got hooked on the show “In Plain Sight” on Netflix.  It’s just so easy to watch episode after episode!  I’m sad to say that the character Mary Shannon is as sarcastic as I am.  The stuff she says (minus the bad words and taking of the Lord’s name in vain) is what I think a lot of the time.  So, so sad.  By nature I’m cynical, untrusting, and sarcasm is a love language to me.  Thank God He’s working on that nature!  In hindsight I probably shouldn’t like that show as much as I do, but hey…if nothing else I can learn how not to be.

Which brings me to something I also wanted to write about…the point of this here blog.  Because of my glass-half-empty, Eeyore personality, I have to daily fight to see the positive.  As a child of God and Christ follower one would think it would come easier to me.  Not really.  The fact that I can see the positive at all is a testament to God’s goodness to me.  That’s why I named this blog the Sunny Side.  Also because I’m an old soul (older than my years on earth anyway) and I love the song.  I’ve thought a lot about this perceived character flaw of mine.  I’ve been dealing with chronic depression for pretty much my whole life, and while I don’t think I’ve let it define me, I do think it affects everything.  Recently while reading 2 Corinthians 12 about Paul’s thorn, I think I better understand some things about myself.  Verses 7-10 in the ESV version (which seems to be the popular version to use these days) says,

⁷ So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,^[a] a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ¹⁰ For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I see my character flaw as a weakness and used to see it as a “bad” thing I needed to get rid of in order to live life to the fullest.  Recently I’ve come to the understanding that it is indeed a weakness, but not necessarily a bad thing.  If God’s glory can best be shown through me as I rely on Him to daily help me live  with chronic depression and a negative attitude, well then, I’ll take it.   That’s my goal. To bring Him glory.  I fail at this often, and have learned the power of apology (given and received.)

These are just a handful of the millions of words floating around my brain today.  I hope they make some sort of sense, and most of all point to the One that it’s all about.

The Silence

For a few months now I’ve been in a very weird place.  Usually I’m a pretty social person and I think some switch flipped when we started going to our new church over a year ago.  I realized something about relationships: they develop over something shared.  Be it space, a job, a church, a class, etc.  Typically it’s a physical place.

With the craze of social networks, new kinds of relationships started to form.  Those people I call “friends” despite the fact that I’ve never met them face to face, or even have spoken to them audibly.  The weird happened when I realized that the scales had tipped and I had more online friends (in people I’d never met) than I did friends in real life.  Now when I use the word friend, it’s with this definition in mind: acquaintance someone we know very little.  Although, I will say with everyone sharing so much about themselves on fb these days, it is possible to feel that someone is a good friend (someone we know quite well.)  When I had this realization, without really thinking it through, I started pulling back from all things social network related.  I stopped blogging.  I would read fb updates to keep up on family happenings and such, but didn’t really post many updates myself.  And twitter…I pretty much stopped that all together.

It wasn’t so much a stand I was taking, or even something I felt I needed to share with others via those sites.  It’s just what I needed to do.  What I found was a profound silence.  It stresses me out at times to know about all the happenings.  I feel guilty when I forget to pray for or can’t help with all the causes and stories that you hear.  20 years ago, you knew what you knew about needs and crisis and world happenings via the news or simply word of mouth from friends, and it was manageable.  With today’s internet and information overload I just couldn’t handle it.  I feel for everyone who’s lost a loved one and every diagnosis of cancer and every orphan in Africa, but the fact is I can do very little to help those situations.  I can send up a quick “arrow” prayer (one of those , “Lord…intervene in this situation…amen.”) or I can send a little money their way, but the reality is my brain can only hold so much information and I don’t have tons of extra money.  My heart can only hold so much hurt for others.  And I was overloaded.

Thus my self-imposed sabbatical from blogging.  All the posts I mentally wrote during that time were either complete downers or laced with sarcasm and much venting about stuff.  Not what I want the Sunny Side to be about.  Not what I want ME to be about!

What I heard God speaking to me about in the vacuum that was created from all that silence was that the areas I CAN do something about are the ones He’s placed right in front of me.  In my world that translates to my family, my job (the students and families I am around), my church family, my neighbors, you know…the  people I see.  The people I can look in the eyes.  The friends I’ve made online are important to me, and I think about them often.  There’s Evan in Florida.  I really hope to take the family to Disney again someday and be able to meet this awesome, young man and his family in person.  There’s Shellie in California who I count as a dear friend who I’ve also never met in person, but I have spoken to on the phone a few times.  There’s Sarah in Hawaii, and Kelly and Mike in Utah who I did get to meet on the Music Boat, but first met as online friends with a music connection.  There’s Robbie, who sent the first Christmas card I received two years in a row (way to be on it, Robbie!) who I’ve also never met.  These are people I count among the “good friend” category, and my time away from the internet has left me missing them greatly.

This past week I felt that familiar tug to write again.  To get my words out here (and I have many!)  Again, it was like someone flipped a switch and I just knew the silence was over.  I’ve learned what I needed to learn from this time.  I need to move ahead and try to find a balance between my online world and my real world friendships.  I need both!  Chances are I will be tipping the  scales one way or another every day, but I’m pretty sure that’s just life.

I’m curious…how do you balance things?  It’s something I’ve always struggled with, how to balance life.

 

I Miss Blogging

It’s been over a month since my last post.  <<sigh>>  The reasons (excuses) are totally legit.  I really miss it though, and this past week I think I’ve written 8 or 9 different posts in my head.  Sadly ten minutes after I mentally hit “publish”, they disappeared into the abyss known as my brain.  I’m sure they’re in there somewhere.  I’d need some sort of GPS to find them though.

The biggest factor in my being MIA from not only my blog, but the internet in general, is that I was focusing on my “real” life more than my online one.  For those of you who know me in “real” life and keep up with me on facebook, twitter, or this blog, I think you can attest to the fact that I’m pretty much the same.  Although I do know I tend to be able to express myself more clearly in print than in a face to face with someone.  (For all I know you could be sitting reading this and going…huh, I don’t get what you’re saying…which is sometimes how I feel conversations go in real life.)

My husband and I recently took a parenting teenagers class at our church.  It was pretty much amazing and we both learned tons of helpful things.  One week’s lesson was about social media.  Not only was it eye-opening in respect to how we raise our kids, it was especially eye-opening to how I approach all thing internet related.  I’ve had the pleasure of making some really good online friends over the past few years.  These are people that I keep in touch with regularly (through social media or texts), yet have never met face to face.  They are legitimate friends, but they aren’t here.  They aren’t the people I can call in an emotionally low moment and say, “Please go get a coffee with me!  I’m about to lose it (at home, work, whatever.)”  Doesn’t mean I love them less, it just means the miles between us put restrictions on our friendship.

One of the most glaring things I took away from that class was that I spent a LOT of time focusing on my online relationships, and the real life ones I had were either non-existent anymore, or on life support.  When we made the move from our home church of 18 years, to the one we currently attend (and have for a little over a year now) we “lost” a lot of real life friends.  Some because we chose to leave, some just because our paths no longer cross…unless we are very intentional about it, and it was hard.  Still is.

Bottom line is for the past 2 months or so, I’ve really felt like I need to be here.  Fully engaged in my “real” life.  It’s been hard.  It’s been messy.  It meant I have to put myself out there to make new friends at our new church, and that is scary.  And hard.  And time consuming.  But I love it!  I’ve met some awesome people.  Will they all be my new bff…hardly.  Through all of this I can say the thing I have gained most is insight into myself, my motives, and what my passions are, and what they should be.

It’s been a learing experience for sure, and so often I’ve wished I could fit time to write into the the equation. I’d love to share the things I’ve learned with you guys!  I get the feeling as we’re settling into fall (with what is predicted to be a horrific winter on the horizon), those long, cold winter days will give me the chance to play catch up.  For now, I leave you with a hearty, “I missed you so much!!”  Now, I need to shower and get ready to go.  The fam and I are going to the apple orchard (no i’s in sight…and I might even leave my iphone in the car) to hang out with some friends and their kids. Have a happy weekend!