2...Picture Kharli

My daughter Kharli is the person in my life that I've been the closest with the longest.  Everything I like about myself is mirrored in her, magnified by ten, and enhanced with her own special uniqueness.  She is everything I wish I could be.  I love her with all my heart.

1...Picture Me

Here I am "working." :)

1.  I'm at school because, even though we're on break, I'm dedicated.
2.  I'm blogging right now because, even though I'm at school, I'm easily distracted.
3.  I just went back and fixed commas in my first two sentences because I love punctuation and insist on using it correctly.
4.  Number 3 makes me a bit of a nerd, and I'm okay with that.
5.  Right now I'm listening to Coldplay...my favorite band of all time.
6.  I hate wearing shoes and just kicked them off my feet.
7.  I love coffee, especially the Mocha I'm drinking inbetween keystrokes.
8.  The word keystrokes just made me giggle because my inner child is a 12 year old boy.
9.  I'm having 80's flashbacks because iTunes just switched to the Go-Gos.
10.  I gotta go dance across the room before "Our Lips Are Sealed" is over...

See ya!

I Don't Get It

I love my husband a great deal, and one of the things I dig about him is that he's a sports fanatic.  Every sport, all NY teams, every weekend.  And that's just the pro stuff, don't even get me started on his college teams.  He's all guy that way, and I get that.  I even like it.  

But what I don't understand is the number of women who are as into football as my man.  I know that makes me sound hopelessly gender-biased, which I'm really not, but my girlfriends who scream at the TV and play the football pool and look forward to Sunday because the games are on?  I don't get them.

I just don't understand why they like it so much.  What's the pull?  What IS it about football that makes them light up like that?  Am I missing something? 

I've been told that it's sexy for a woman to be into sports.  That hats and jerseys on girls are cool. But really...unless that girl's doing a football jersey strip tease after the game, what's so sexy about it?   Truly, I'd rather be reading, or baking cookies, or listening to music, or watching reruns of Friends...all very nice past-times that may or may not lead to sex just much as football watching.

Don't get me wrong, though.  I do like sports...some of them.  I like hockey and baseball a lot, and enjoy going to those games.  I think it's cute when my husband buys our girls NY team jerseys.  And I really want our girls to play sports as they grow up.  Sure, I'll be the mom on the sidelines reading a book, but hey...I'll be there.

I have this vision, years down the road, of my daughters sitting on the couch on Sundays with their dad, shouting and cheering over some televised game.  I have a feeling there will be many weekends to come where our girls play games on Saturday, and watch them on Sunday. 

And me?  I'll probably still be sitting here shaking my bewildered head as I bake cookies and blog.

Butterflies vs Ants

 

Educators love maxims.  We have a motivational saying for every circumstance you can imagine.  Each year at my school we adopt a phrase that expresses our commitment and ideals.  This year it's,

"If nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies."

Pretty.  Motivating.  And true, or at least I think so.  I love this motto. Who wouldn't aspire to be as beautiful as a butterfly?  Who wouldn't identify with the idea that change can be scary, yet liberating all at once?  

Today I saw a very pretty butterfly, but unfortunately I wasn't inspired by it much.  It happened to be dead ( I hope it was lucky enough to be dead) and its carcass was being transported on the backs of a trail of ants.

Ants.  Now there's an insect that nobody writes motivational maxims about.  But the more I considered that, the more I thought...hey, I'd be an ant over a butterfly any day.  

Ants are never lonely.  Ant colonies are huge, and if you are a member, you automatically have 100 relatives and friends who've got your back.  Ants stick together.  Go try stepping your foot on an anthill and see what happens.  

Ants learn what works, and then perfect it.  They don't waste their time devising more elaborate tunneling systems.  This gives them more time to plan ahead for the things that do matter.

Every ant has a job, understands it, and excels at it.  Ants don't give up...they don't even know what it means to give up.  It's a physical impossibility that ants can carry the heavy loads that they do.   I personally think ants do the impossible simply because they believe in themselves.

I never saw a butterfly with that kind of fire.  A butterfly's days are filled with floating about, happily sipping a little nectar, and napping all alone in some flower garden without a care in the world.  

So, while butterflies and flower gardens are lovely, ants are the true dreamers.  I think I'd rather be an ant.

Attemped Refuge

Our girls go to a preschool at a church.  Today when I picked them up from school, Catie lagged behind a little as we walked out to our car.  She wasn't much interested in the car ride home, I guess.

She stood watching some people coming in and out of this door to a building I'd never been in before.  I thought she was right behind me, but when I turned to take her hand, she was bolting down the pathway, heading for that door.  She almost made it when I caught her.

As I carried her away crying, some of the people standing around were laughing at us and pointing above our heads.  Puzzled, I glanced up to see the huge lettering above the church doorway Catie almost went through.

It read, "Sanctuary."