Ch-ch-changes

I'm toying with new templates for my blog, but I keep reverting back to the original in the meantime (sans picture of me with the emu, which always gets lost in the shuffle). Anyway, just thought I'd explain if you happen on here sometime and see dinosaurs or foliage or something unexpected. "Excuse our mess, we're under construction!"

Chickens and/or Feathers

"Chicken or feathers."

My dad used this phrase on me when I was in college and bemoaning the fact that I had either ten (okay, maybe not ten - maybe, like, two) guys after me or none at all. I like the imagery of the feathers part; I imagine myself as a cartoon character standing, dazed, in the cloud of feathers left behind when a chicken makes a shotgun-type exit. Or explodes.

I'm finding that there are lots of things in life that are chicken-or-feathers:

- Truman was the only baby born on either side of the family last year. This year, between our two families, we're welcoming seven babies. Can you say CHICKEN?!

- If I've got an idea for this blog, I've got a truckload of ideas. I have to physically restrain myself from posting more than about every other day...until I run out of ideas. Then I don't post for a month. Enter feathers, stage left.

- My child hasn't been eating for about the last three weeks. Purses his lips when he sees a spoon, throws a tantrum when placed in the high chair, you name it. But for the last three days I haven't been able to get enough food in him. One thing that he has yet to eat is chicken (are you catching the subtle reference here?), but he does, miraculously, eat refried beans.

- I got asked today what kinds of things I like to do. "You know, what are your hobbies?" After learning that the asker's hobbies ranged from knitting to rock climbing to charcoal drawing, my limited list of hobbies (cook, eat, rinse, repeat) felt a lot like...feathers.

Anyone else feeling the drought-or-drowning dilemma?

Aching

Sometimes I ache.

When I see any kind of stage performance, I ache to be up there. I miss singing my heart out under bright lights and the electric feeling of being on stage.

Sometimes I ache terribly for my family, especially when I realize that, geographically, the nine of us are only bound to get further apart. And that the few-times-yearly visits to my parents' house will likely make up the rest of the memories I will ever have of my mother and father.

Many times I have ached for the man I would marry - the man who now lights up my life with his grin and his schemes (both equally irresistible).

I almost hesitate to write it, but I know I ache for my dead brother. Even though we never met in this life, my heart misses him.

Most of the time, like tonight, I ache to create - to give form or freedom to the heaviness in my heart that yearns to leave a tangible legacy.

And tears spring to my eyes as I realize that he's 11 months old and sleeping in the next room.

I'm not proud to admit it, but...

...here's what I found when I cleaned out my car this morning:

a pencil
8 pens
several half-sticks of gum
a baseball cap
91 cents
a conducting baton
two car wash tokens
a washcloth
some laffy taffy
an ice scraper
a flashlight
one AAA battery
two rubber bands
...and enough garbage to nearly fill a 13-gallon bag

Curiously, I did NOT find a single napkin, Taco Bell hot sauce packet, or Goldfish cracker.

Stuff I found that isn't ours:

a Shrek figurine
lip balm
a lighter
one lone red glove
a lip liner
two more ice scrapers
a Hot Wheels-type toy car

If I didn't trust my husband - or if I didn't know this car was previously driven by women - the lip balm/liner might give me cause to worry. As it is, I'm more concerned with the fact that it's taken almost a year of owning this car for me to reach that far under the seats.

Stumped

Well it's been another two weeks, incredibly enough. I've had a lot swirling around in my head the last little while, but sadly for you, Dear Reader, it's the kind of thing that belongs more in a personal journal (another item which I forgot on my most recent road trip) than on a blog.

I will say this: last night I found myself trying to measure the success of my day by how much I got accomplished. Let's see...I unpacked from our trip...kept the boy entertained...the dishes are done, plus I made it to the store...filled a prescription...cleared things up with management...went to book club... Somewhere in the middle of crossing off my mental checklist for the day, I realized that I do this every day. I'll be washing my face or changing into pajamas when I start to either silently chastise myself for a day ill-spent or pat myself on the back for one that was unusually productive - at least by my standards.

The bad part is, even my best days rarely leave me feeling satisfied. I spend a lot of evenings committing to 'do more, be better' tomorrow and a lot of days frustrated at how my life seems to slip through my fingers. Am I chasing the end of a non-existent rainbow here? Where does true self-satisfaction come from?

I worry that my whole life I've been too extrinsically motivated: grades, praise, big hearty 'thank yous' and the like. So I look for validation at the end of a day in the number of things I've accomplished because it's a quantifiable measure of how I'm doing. Clear-cut. Solid.

Does anyone else do this? How do I ever know how I'm really 'measuring up' - and is it healthy to worry about it at all?

Two weeks

A funeral attended
Two relatives moved
Book club hosted
Relief Society taught...twice
Slideshow finished
Birthday lunch date enjoyed
Birthday party thrown
Interstate road trip taken

Such are a few of the things that have occurred in the two weeks since I last posted, which is part of why I feel justified in not having written anything in a while. May not look like much, but for some reason the last couple of weeks have almost done me in.

The guilt was finally getting to me, and when I mentioned to my sister that I needed to jot off a post to stave off said guilt, she insightfully replied, "Well, there you have it. I'm never going to start a blog because I don't need one more thing to feel guilty about." She may have a point...

But while I'm here: I've decided traveling is not relaxing to me. I mean, if I was headed to Hawaii with my husband on an all-expense paid vacation, MAYBE I would feel relaxed. As it is, I got three hours of sleep the night before our trip because I was up packing everything from diaper cream to biohazard suits into our luggage. And you know what I forgot? My toothbrush.

Not relaxing.

Anxiety Attack

I'm doing it again.

I'm alternately eating ice cream and peanut butter straight out of the container. With the same spoon. Standing up. After 9 pm.

I only get crazy out-of-control in my eating like this when I'm feeling really anxious about something. Is it the impending long car trip tomorrow? The full day of trying to keep the almost-ten-month-old occupied (and quiet) during a funeral and its attending events? The overnight stay in an unfamiliar place? Sunday's Relief Society lesson? The as-yet-unfinished (and let's be honest - hardly started) birthday slideshow for my mom that has to be done in a week?

Whatever the cause, this dire situation calls for only one thing: graham crackers.