While I may be exaggerating just a tad, there are times when I feel just that. I am nuclear bomb.  And watch out for the fall out when I go off.  It has been a fair while since I last lost my temper, but too often I feel close to the detonation point.

There are many things that take me to this point and sometimes I can diffuse myself and other times I unknowingly look for that munitions expert in my life that has the words, actions and wisdom to diffuse the situation at hand and bring back to calm. Does this make me less of a person because I need an outside source? Maybe. But I think it also shows strength to know when I need help. 

I have lived my recent years with an overbearing attitude that I am not my own person.  I have no thoughts that could possibly make sense. I have no voice in a conversation. I have no feelings that matter. My physical pain is of no consequence. I am not that.  I matter. My thoughts are to be heard. My voice is strong and clear.  I want to say I am woman hear me roar, but I’m not about being in your face.  Unless of course you push all the right buttons in all the right combinations.  Then I’ll be all up in your face like a fat kid on a smartie.

Did you know ….

everytime you let me down, you break my heart?

everytime you don’t hear my voice, you crush my spirit?

everytime you expect more from me than you’re willing to give of yourself, you lose my respect?

Did you know ….

there is more to me than what you care to see?

I have thoughts and visions that are worth hearing and exploring?

I am a force to be reckoned with and would protect you with my life?

Do you even want to know ….

I have to swallow my heart everytime my children walk out the door.

my heart break for a friend who is hurting miles away from me.

just because the wounds have healed the pain lingers. 

Let me introduce to you Dr Evil. Recently we have become friends and I have to say that Dr Evil is a welcome addition to my growing number of friends. 

Dr Evil allows me to be the person I am and at times then encourages me to be more.  Good or bad, right or wrong.  There is a growing strength in our friendship that I have come to realize I have never had before.  I can tell Dr Evil my most embarrassing moments, stupid (and I mean STUPID!) decision making choices, the results and outcomes and still feel comfortable in my skin around Dr Evil. There is not even the perception that I am being treated any different than any other person.  This is refreshing as I am forging a new life for myself.  That’s not to discount the already long standing friendship with the people who were there during those times of making mistakes and learning and growing because of them,  but I have found a subtle shift from new friends when they learn things about me that make me the person I am today.  Our pasts are our pasts, we can learn from what we have lived and encountered and become a more loving accepting person, or we can live in our closed little minds and not fully live at all.

Dr Evil is an intelligent, witty, actively fun loving person that enjoys good conversation and is then comfortable in the silence too.  There is a connection that I’m not sure either of us understands, but we have both acknowledged it, and accept it for what it is.  Both of us have been through some pretty dramatic and traumatic times in our recent pasts and neither of us looks at the other differently.  We made the choices we thought were best for us at the time and live on.

its been too long in fact. I keep writing new posts in me head and then they never get on to the computer and then here.

Much of the mundane has been happening in our lives. And simmering under the surface of the mundane is a not so mundane layer that runs, well it runs deep.

I am still mourning the loss of my marriage and with that the idea of the man I once thought to be my eternal life partner. That is a mix of emotions. There are moments when I could just break down and cry for days until no more tears would come, and then there are the moments of excitement as I think of seeking out a new life.

We are an ever evolving creature and as we progress in our lives, there are changes that are inevitable and there are changes that we wish we could make, but those are the static, nonmoving, parts of our lives. Like having children. Yes they grow and evolve in them selves, but once we are a parent, we are ALWAYS a parent.

People come in to and out of our lives for reasons we will never understand. Is it ever our lot to understand? I suppose that is the ultimate question. Even the length of time is a mystery as we mourn the loss of those that have gone out of our lives for reasons we don’t understand.

It was said to me recently, people come in to our lives for a reason, and they are they are in our lives for a season or a life time. Seasons in a lifetime are not necessarily measured in weeks or months. Seasons in a lifetime could be days, weeks, months or years. Once the reason for the people entering our lives has been discovered, the season is over. Even with that understanding it doesn’t make loss of the person any more tolerable. And we have to remind ourselves that while we mourn the loss of people in our lives, someone is mourning the fact that we are no longer in their life either.

Healthy Weighty Wee Man … my Preschool Graduate

This past while has been a real learning experience for me.  Not necessarily HUGE lessons, but certainly a multitude of little ones!

Some of the things I have learned …

• you can’t just ignore it and it’ll go away. ~ you actually have to feed a child! who knew??!!!
• when it rains in Calgary in the summer time, it hails.  LOTS. and that hail hurts and leaves hail damage behind.
• eventually summer ends and the children go back to school ~ par-tay time for the Mammies!
• grass grows up around dog poo and the lawn mower does not pick it up when you cut that grass.
• weeds suck.
• Milk actually does make you gain weight.
• there is no accounting for some peoples children.
• sleep is over rated
• don’t bother asking for help ~ the requests land on deaf ears or are just plain ignored.
• chocolate labs have springs built in to their feet.
• don’t try to start a fire in a teepee with wet wood, it makes for really stinky laundry when you get home.
• laundry does not fold itself and laundry elves don’t exist. well at least not at my house.
• I can’t please everyone, so I’ll just please myself!

that truely is the question.

I would say watch this space, but that might make your eyes go square.

Just under two years ago I wrote a post about how wide open the sky felt from everywhere else I have lived in the world.  While driving home from dropping the monsters off at their dad’s the other night, I was once again reminded of how the sky is the same and so drastically different all at the same time.  We live on the cusp of the foothills rolling toward that Rocky Mountains in great waves of farm land interspersed with crashes of canyons that drop away in the landscape and resume once again just as quickly as it fell away.  That is to the West.

To the East the land is so flat in places you can see for miles.  Literally. 

I recently remarked to a friend that I really can see why the Native North Americans feel that the land, water, and air speak to them.  If you allow yourself to stop and listen to them, they really do.  Don’t ask me what they are saying I haven’t got a clue!  But still after so much population and technology has come in the the world, there are still times when I have been standing at some remote place and felt it.  That pull that would take you to another place in your heart, mind and soul if you let it. Peyote not needed.  Is it the God shaped vacuum or just an instinctively primal pull to return to our basic instincts?

there are times when I could just simply throw my computer out the window … and it’s usually very much every time I am nearly finished something that I have been working on for a wee while and then it craps all over my desk, jumps up and farts in the air while taking a swan dive off the desk.  It’s then that I would happily toss it out the non-opening window to the right of my desk. 

And then I wonder, should I scrap the laptop and get a desk unit?  And if so what kind.  Of course that thought is followed by hmmmmm what monster should I sell to get me my new toy?  Which one will profer the most amount … definitely not Wee Blonde Child, never mind the poopy issues, that chick is a diva … a DeeeeeeeeVaaaaa!  No really.  That monster can pull it with the best of them!  May the good lord above help her minions should she ever get famous!   But I’m digressing.  While not “in the market” for a new computer, I certainly have issues with this one at times.  But again come the sensible thoughts, well this one is perfectly good, so why should I go about a new expense of getting a new one, which one shoud I look at getting (something I’ll attack my techno brained brother for because you know who I’m going to call when I’ve exhausted all my thoughts and other avenues to figure something out with it!), where do I pull the money from, what child do I sell to get enough money together …. I’m sure all the same thoughts everyone else in the world goes through when thinking about a major purchase, except maybe Richard Branson or Donald Trump.

But it is my computer and at times it is my life line to the world!  I certainly can’t converse so easily with friends from all over the world with out it!  Oh I could have the internet cabled in to the house, but at the end of the day, with out the computer it wouldn’t do much would it?  How am I going to chat with New Author or NOMU in Ireland while sipping coffee, or have a mad cap chat with Prudence Wiggelwort Downunda if I were sans my computer?  Slightly giving away my age, I do indeed remember a time when computers were as large as small houses and were used mostly by some governments.  Now we think it amazing when someone doesn’t have either a computer OR the internet at home.  How is it that could happen?  But at the end of the day life was far simpler then and we didn’t know different, nor did we care.  Now, however, I can’t fathom life with out my satellite TV never mind my laptop and internet.  So when my laptop decides to be hormonal … I guess I’ll give it a hug, a cup of cool chamomile tea, and some time and space to become right again.

Damn thing!

Recently I have come to realize that I have learned far more from parenting than I have outwardly noticed, beyond raising up my children.  Yes there are times when I do have to choose what is the better thing to argue about with them and more often than not the result is, “Don’t argue with me go do as your told!” stated to the ‘offending’ child.  Although its not always about the children doing as they are told, but what they choose to wear, TV shows to watch, books to read, eat for a snack/meal.  Yes there are always arguments waiting to happen in those issues with any child as they grow, but sometimes, somethings just aren’t worth getting worked up over and at the end of the day this same principle has come in to my adult life.  I have come to realize that I can choose which arguments to have with other people.  Its not just about what is or is not perceived as a slight against ourselves, its about having an easy calmer life. 

In the end it is more often than not about avoiding drama.  As much as we like a little drama in our lives, a lot is not so nice.  A little flutter and flurry to get the heart racing is all good and then there is the draining, gut wrenching, physically demanding drama that we all like to avoid.  Yet, ironically, there really are people who appear to thrive on this type of drama.  Really. There is.  I can not see how someone could enjoy such upheaval in their daily life!  The stress, the agony, but then there is the attention that the drama brings.  And maybe that’s what its all about.  When you’re raising children, you have to find the balance of good and bad attention.  Yes, contrary to popular belief, there is such a thing.  And I can speak from personal experience, that it is very hard to find that line and even more difficult to come back from the extreme of one or the other, usually the negative.

Sitting back and recalling my childhood, I do not recall either of my parents saying to me, “is it really worth the argument?” but then it wasn’t until I was much much older that I started arguing with my siblings.  And by that time it was only one wise in the head that got in between any of those “interactions”!  What best I can do now is to try to teach my children that sometimes some things just are not worth the stress, worry anxiety and exhaustiveness of some arguments.  Goodness knows it took me long enough to learn this!