All Things Heather

Easter revisited...

I'm attempting to channel my inner kids craftster. I know she is in there because every once in a while I pleasantly surprise myself by having some creative thought that meshes cohesively with the plans of my children.  This thought was not my own however but kindly borrowed from Amy over at Angry Chicken. 

Although it's pretty straight forward - chocolate, shredded wheat, stir - even the simplest craft can turn into a complicated ordeal.  I resigned myself that my little nest builders were not really nesters after all, but rather blob, volcano, or big mound of chocolate builders.  Fair enough - they had a great time eating them. 

Although I love my children immensely, there are times when I wonder what in the hell was I thinking.  Even with chocolate smeared all over the house, it surprisingly enough was not one of those times.  The greatest thing my children have taught me was just to let things go sometimes.  Let go of my preconceived notions of what things should look like or be like, let go of trying to perfect something that is fine the way it is, let go of those little nagging thoughts that in order to enjoy something it has to fit in my bubble.  I'm eternally grateful for those moments, to really appreciate just being the person I am and the mother I am and to not worry about how it should be but just love it how it is.

   

For all you who can correctly channel their inner martha - this is a fun project.  For those of you like me, it's still fun. 

what are you doing?

Since the girls have started their new school we have gotten invited to about a gazillion birthday parties.  This really doesn't mean my children are social geniuses, or even popular for that matter, I think it's just because there are 2 of them and their names are more likely to come up in birthday party conversation. One's younger, the other is older -  in preschool terms that is - and since they always seem to come as a pair, they get invited to both spectrum of parties - the little kids and the big kids - in preschool terms of course.  So another weekend, another birthday. I'm usually OK with the birthdays, it gives me a good opportunity to scope out the other parents and I think I keep inwardly hoping that I'll have some cosmic connection with my "other mom soul mate."  It hasn't happened yet, and although I would love to go into detail about some of the other seriously whacked out families I've seen,  I'll save it for another day.

This particular party was for a sweet little girl named Angela who is 5 going on 15.  The party itself was only mildly entertaining but the entire scene was pretty much hilarious.  I was the only native English speaking person at the party.  Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely down with the diversity thing, I got my degree in ethnic studies and I'm all about living in a multicultural world but I had to laugh because it was ALL Chinese women with a few token husbands thrown in.  All very polite, but all speaking very chinese Chinese that I could not understand a single word of.  I spent a good deal of time nodding and smiling and sadly resigned myself that all those episodes of Ni Hao, Kai-lan I've watched over the last month had not taught me shit. I tried to understand, I listened with fierce concentration for the first 20 minutes or so hoping that even one word would ring a bell, but needless to say, it didn't, and i resigned myself that spontaneous osmosis doesn't really work with learning languages.  So I quickly want from fascinated to being sad that if my other mom soul mate was here I would never know it because I didn't have a clue to what anyone was saying and then finally on to being bored out of my mind. 

I was incredibly relieved to remember that I had brought my knitting and I had something to do with my hands.  You would not believe the number of kids who came up to me and were fascinated by what I was doing with the pointy sticks and bright colored yarn.  It's pretty obvious to me that I'm knitting a sock but apparently not to the general population - every time a little child asked what it was I made them guess before I told them - a shirt, a tissue, a pair of pants, a dog bowl.  A particularly precocious little girl grilled me on the whole process for about 20 minutes and then basically came to conclusion (this is all interpreted by body language, rolling of the 5 year old eyes, a deep sigh, and a shrug) that it was just dumb to knit a sock when you could buy a whole pair at the store and although she liked the color, hers were better since they had flowers on them.  Hilarious, and so opinionated about a little innocent sock.  I was rather amused but taken aback and found myself quickly defending myself with all the virtues of sock knitting.  But she had moved on to bigger and better things.

   

All in all it was a fine time, the best part being that I got to work on my socks.  The cute blockers are from Leggy Creations - she really does nice work and these fit my feet nearly perfectly. The stripes are about an inch each so when I need to measure, I just slide it on and viola, no fumbling for the ever elusive tape measure or trying to get my toe up to my face to read what the darn thing says.  These are probably my first self knit pair in years..that's pretty pathetic considering I probably have about 100 skeins of sock yarn stashed about my house. Maybe it's time to share the love...stay tuned for that. 

I am stunned...

by the outpouring of warmth and empathy I received from so many of you.  It really made my day.  Granted I did say that I was going to write for me, not anyone else, but I'll let it slip just this once and admit that it was a mighty fine moment of validation to realize I'm not alone.  I do want to say that I will continue to seek out those "great blogs" since they do provide fantastic eye candy and inspiration in my life but I no longer need to strive to be like those blogs.  I'm just me and that's OK.   

I took each and every comment to heart and will be responding to all of you - eventually that is, my personal timetable can be a bit skewed at times.   Caitlyn made a comment that struck me on a number of different levels though and I wanted to chat about it for a moment. The first being the obvious, in Caitlyn's own words "I like having a place to express my thoughts, my triumphs, and my failures. I choose not to care how many people comment. I don't feel the need to apologize if I don't write for a few weeks; this is my space and I will write when I want to. " Point well taken.   

The second way it struck me was a bit less obvious.  I've been pathetically inept at keeping up with other people's blogs and it's kind of self centered for me to think that I can nurture this connection to the outside world by merely being here and not working at connecting with other people myself.  I'm really busy, with the kids, and the house and the other gazillion of projects I find myself being sucked into. I have found that on a number of occasions, that I'll read someone's work and just don't feel like taking the time to hit the comment button.  Or even worse, I don't even take the time to read the text, I just look at the picture, make a judgment,  and move on.  I subscribe to nearly 250+ sites, it's ridiculous to think that I can keep up, I get behind on my readings, I get frustrated, I feel disconnected and it's all down hill from there.  I appreciate each and every site I'm subscribed to in a different way but it's unrealistic to think I can keep up with them all.  Although I'm not ready to hit the clear button and start over, I'm going to try in the midst of my clicking and moving on to take a moment and really think about something that was written.  And to take the time to comment on it, in a meaningful or superficial way to just let the person know that they were important enough to me that day to stop what I was doing and press the comment button.  Now you can't do that with every person, every time, but how nice would that be to know, that just one person really did take the time to see what you had said and felt it was important enough to reply back.  So I challenge you to do the same, just one a day, it doesn't need to be here, just someplace out there, take the time to read a post and reach out.  Just one a day.    

Remember me?

I thought this was a fitting question that typepad asked after I had not logged in for a number of months.  Yes - I would like you to remember me, thanks so much for asking, I think we would all like to be remembered in one way or another.  In all honestly, I hope that all of you out there remember me too, but if not, that's OK too. 

I'd like to say I had some sort of major epiphany that led me back to the blogging world - but I didn't - or at least not a major one.  I've kind of just stumbled back after realizing that I didn't really have any fantastic reasons for leaving in the first place.  That's what I thought, until I found myself sitting here trying entirely to hard to figure out something amazing and profound to say. Now is when the epiphany comes, not about why I'm back but about why I left.  I felt myself having a blogging crisis in "keeping up with the Jone's" fashion.  I was beginning to feel true pressure of wanting to have an uber perfect craft blog that folks would come from around the world to ooh and ahh over.  You've seen those places right, with the 275 comments, with the earth children who read and explore nature and never wear anything from Walmart, the wonderful photography of little toes and bugs and artsy stuff in perfect lighting, and the books and the fabric lines and the amazing knitted works being produced at break neck speed.  All the while running a successful business, being thin and beautiful, creating amazing works of art whether the medium be quilting, knitting, or food, and managing to have a blogging smile on their face in every single post that they come up with every single day.  Don't get me wrong, I'm amazingly impressed by many of these women and wonder what things would really be like if I was in their shoes for just a moment.  (Especially the artistic photos that make some of them truly look like super models.)  But is it really all pink cotton candy or is there a lot of behind the scenes editing and Prozac behind those moments?   But honestly, that's the whole point, who cares.  I'm not one of those people, although I try to pretend I have it together I don't most of the time.  And although I'm blessed with a million wonderful things everyday, I'd rather explore the crappy one just to get it off my soul.  And  honestly, I really can't base my entire self worth or the worth of my latest knitted sweater on how many comments I may or may have not gotten.  I really don't have enough residual self esteem for that.  I work really hard to keep what i have intact and there are enough things in the world that break you down everyday, just a 1/4 inch at a time,  so I really don't need to be looking for another reason to remind myself why I'm not as good as "fill in the blank here."  Because I am as good, but I'm also as bad and as ugly as the rest of all us common folk and if I hide that with warm and fuzzy posts then I'm denying myself the right to be myself.  Let me tell you, it's taken a lot of work to figure out who I am (a work still in progress) and to become OK with it, I don't need my own blog sabotaging it. 

So to make a long story short, I'm going to give it one last try.  I'd like to do it for me, you know, as a therapeutic catharsis, but really I'm going to do it in the hopes of just connecting with one other person out there who feels the same way I do at that given time.  One will be good enough.  That's really what we only need right?  Not the masses, but just one, one that is is true.  So hello world and check here if you remember me.