Story time at the Creamery

Greetings All!

As some of you may be aware, Whimsy is hosting Minionlympics at the Creamery this week and today's event has to do with BAD dating experiences.

I have told my Tale of Woe in the comments.  If you're looking for humorous reading material, go HERE, check out the comments and read and laugh.

Being happily married I can now chuckle at the abysmal dating experiences.

An Open Letter to my Birthday Boy

Dear Chris,

30 years ago today you were born.

I don't know much about that since I was rather North of you and attending pre-school.  But I'm here today to tell you how grateful I am that you were born.  I'm grateful that your mother is stubborn and didn't listen when the doctors told her not to have any more kids.  She wanted you and she was having you and there was just no talking to her.  Or so I'm assuming since, as you know, I wasn't there.  I'm also grateful that she had you and that she and your dad raised you.  They are very different, those parents of yours, but I'm profoundly grateful for their differences because I think it's those differences that have helped to make you the man that you are.

I'm grateful that your brothers and sister didn't manage to kill you with their various mischief and accidents growing up.  I'm especially grateful for the role that modern medicine played in the survival of your childhood.

I'm grateful that you and Jeff and Pavel didn't manage to kill yourselves with your own various mischief and accidents throughout your adolescence.  You've told me stories and frankly, you were reckless and foolish but I'm grateful you got it out of your system then rather than now.  And I think you learned a lot and that it makes you the funner parent in our household. 

I'm grateful for your dedication, education and work ethic.  You come home, from work or from classes and are absolutely certain that you're going to be fired or failed.  And yet.  You get up every morning, you pull your stuff together and get to work.  When I think that my day is hard, when I get tired and frustrated, I think of you and your determination and I get my stuff together and get to work.  You are one of the smartest people I know, you are complicated and interesting and half the time I don't know if I'm coming or going with you.  But I'm grateful for it.  Your complexities make living with you interesting and unpredictable.

You are your own man.  And there aren't a lot of women who would be grateful for that, but I am.  You know who you are and you refuse to be manipulated into anything.  I love that about you.  It sometimes makes it difficult to be married to you, you're hard to persuade, hard to win over, hard to negotiate and compromise with, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm grateful for how you Father the Boy.  I love to see him dance when you walk through the door, it is usually the highest point of my day, it cracks me up.  And I love to see you crack up laughing at him, whatever he happens to be doing.  It is the pleasure that you and he take in one another that makes me the happiest.

I want you to know what a gift you are in my life.  You were never expected, and so every day with you is a gift.  I love the long talks, I love hearing about your day because it's so foreign from everything that I know that it sounds almost exotic.  I can't ever thank you properly for all that you have done and all that you continue to do for me every day.  I'm starting to understand why people describe their husband or wife as their better half.  You make me more and better than I am without you.

Happy 30th Birthday, Love.  3 decades in 2 centuries.  It's not a bad beginning.

Tons and Tonnes,

These Women

 

On our sojourn in Santa Fe, we stopped in at this Native American Modern Art Gallery to use their facilities to change our babes, relieve ourselves and thaw out for a few moments.  

On our way out we passed a walled garden with various statues in it.  The above statue of a woman was my favorite.  It struck me in the moment and it became an image that I've come back to again and again in the past couple of weeks.

I've often felt like that.  Alone and windblown.  And yet, I've nearly always found myself wrapped up and protected by these women.  My mother.  My sisters.  Whimsy.  Samwise.  Rachael.  My Sarahs.  Emily.  Kristin.  Mary.  Mona.  Debbi.  Brett. Celeste.  These women of extraordinary kindness, of warmth, of patience, and tolerance and courage.  These women who acknowledge that I am not always the nicest girl, but they love me just the same.  These women, who if pressed, would probably admit that I make them crazy, that I exasperate, frustrate and annoy; but they stay with me all the same.

I find myself trying to purge the trappings of friendships, tired and sad and thinking that I'd be better off going my own way.  I let go, I drop off the radar, I don't answer the phone or emails; always assuming that they'll give up and leave me.

And they never do.  For they are wiser than me and they recognize the world for what it is, a cold, hard place that is best served by good friends and warm blankets.

Sometimes we keep in touch better than others.  We confide fears and anxieties and hopes.  We cry on shoulders and laugh ourselves into headaches.  They sit back and let me ramble on and on and they shake it off when I sit in awe and wonder of their creativity and perseverance. 

I'll never understand what I did to deserve so many worthy women in my life.  I question it constantly.  I am humbled and grateful for them.  I struggle for the words to express myself adequately, and when I struggle and stammer and mutter and pull my hair they sit and wait, and sometimes fill in the gaps with their own words.

But as I emerge from on of those restless cycles, I hope that I can wrap them up and shelter them as they have so often sheltered me.  I'm resolving to try to be a better friend, a better daughter, a better sister.