the next one...

I am going bonkers.  My life, top to bottom, is a mess.  My house is in various stages of extreme disarray.  If it wouldn't embarrass the hallelujah out of my husband, I would post pictures just to prove I'm not exaggerating. And maybe as a cry for help.  Like someone would do an extreme home do-over for me because I am so deeply organizationally challenged.  And a little hoardy on top.  There is the question of - do we have too much?  No.  No, that is not the question.  Because I already know the answer to that question.  Yes.  Yes, we have too much.  Okay.  So, maybe the question is, what do we have too much of?  Yes.  I think that is the correct question.

Clothes.  That might be a factor.  But I live in the armpit of America.  I guess that's not really true.  If you were to look at a map of the United States, it looks way more like New Jersey is.  I'm not passing judgement.  I'm just saying that if you imagine that that's an arm stretching away from the body that is the rest of the country, New Jersey is square in the middle of the armpit.  Anyway, as of right now, on this the 23rd day of January, 2014, with a high of 12 degrees, Cincinnati is a special kind of arctic freezer hell of an armpit.  And I need a dizzying array of different kinds of clothes to attire the people I am responsible for.  There are the days that it starts out super chilly and ends up warm.  There are the days that start out cold and turn polar.  There is the summer that gets so hot that I get very very pro-nudist colony and then there are days like this where I can't figure out how to add one more layer and still be able to move around.  And then decide that moving around is overrated.  I have no sooner put one "season" of clothing away than I have to turn around and pull it all back out.  On top of that, there is the stain spectrum to factor in.

Back in the day, people bought nice school clothes.  When you outgrew them or they became stained, those school clothes became your play clothes.  Clothes got passed down from one kid to the next ad infinitum.  I have no firsthand knowledge of any of that.  I only know that from various comedy routines I've watched or listened to.  I am an only child.  I didn't get clothes passed to me and I didn't pass mine on to anyone.  That I'm aware of.  So now, I'm stuck trying to figure out which stains are 1. treatable 2. passable 3. acceptable 4. too gross to speculate on.  I will share this little nugget of wisdom regarding stinks, stanks and stains.  I use vinegar when doing laundry.  I occasionally use baking soda when doing laundry.  I do not recommend combining the two when trying to fight off the mighty "this sat in the washer too dang long because I was done doing laundry for the day and didn't want to admit it" mildew smell.  There is a reason that they use the two together to make volcanoes.  I will not divulge how long it took me to figure out how all my clothes kept getting holes in them.  I may have speculated about a moth infestation for a while...  So to recap, I need clothes to accommodate "global warming" (which, whether it's a real thing or not, doesn't feel much warmer, especially right about EVERY STINKING WINTER, nor does it feel milder right about EVERY STINKING SUMMER) as well as to convince teachers that my children do not live in a hovel despite how their hair might look.  We have lots of clothes.  I miss garanimals.  4 bottoms, 8 tops, 6 people (that's right.  In my ideal world, they would have sizes all the way up to the hubs), 4 times a year.  I think I just hit nirvana.

Paper.  What paper do you keep?  I try, TRY to be discerning about the piles of school art and writing practices and math sheets and blah blah blah.  I have 4 children bringing home this stuff.  At this stage of the game it's in bins and boxes and on top of shelves and on and on.  And honestly, as I go through some of it, I can't remember a thing about it.  Without a name or some sort of teacher inscribed clue as to what it is supposed to be, I'm stumped.   And yet, still paralyzed at the thought of trashing it.  And honestly, the stuff that I already earmarked as so precious and so dear is getting crumpled and ruined under the weight of the rest.  Next we have to discuss receipts and coupons and action files and to be filed and warranties and instructions and to do lists and and and and and....  Hubs would be thrilled to have not one piece of paper in our home.  He would love if every thing could be digitized and summed up on an iGadget of some sort.  Books, calendars, lists, correspondence, all of it.   Hubs would say there are literal mountains of paper hanging out here.  I think he has a loose definition of altitude.  I'll give him bigger than a mole hill.  Like, if you took the paper out of our house and just started stacking it up next to our house, I don't think it would be as tall as our house.  But if you did do that, could you carefully light it on fire so that I could finally be rid of it?

Crap.  That's all.  Just... crap.  It's my husband's favorite way of categorizing the contents of our home.  Although, it is generally referred to as "your crap". I'm the your in this case.  When we were first married, there was his crap and there was my crap.  I had way more crap.  It's fair to say that he was confused, frustrated and cautious about it.  He didn't have permission to get rid of it.  He didn't understand most of it.  It was definitely in his way.  So, 15 years and 5 kids later, it's done being my crap.  Even if I did the purchasing of 90% of it, it's still ours.  He'd have to fight me over it in court if it came down to it.  Although, he would be fighting to make me keep it so he didn't have to pick it up anymore.  But since we aren't ever going to court and he is stuck with me for life, it is OUR crap.  And yes, I'd like to stop calling it crap.  But the reality is that that is the very problem with all of this.  We have a bunch of non-specific stuff that no one wants to be responsible for and no one wants to take lead and get rid of.  Much like literal crap.  It's spilling out of every room and growing exponentially.  Thankfully, not at all like literal crap.

So, now I'm bonkers.  The past 2-3 months have been a holding pattern.  We have been in a state of flux waiting for some one thing to happen or get done happening.  Holidays, a two week vacation, an impossible work deadline, a student coming to live with us, a student leaving us, getting really sick, exams, depression lifting, paying the last check on a three year financial commitment to our church.  Yes.  That's life.  I get it.   Remember that stress test that you would take to assess your level stress?  High.  Really, really High.  For months now.  And I'm finally feeling like I see light.  So, now what do I do?  The to-do list makes me speechless.  The what.  The how.  The where do I even begin?

It is so hard to know what you want for myself, for my family and not having the anything at all in me to do it.  I am a pack-rat.  I assign value where there is none.  I have belly casts of my last three pregnancies.  Know what I want to do with them?  Nothing.  Know what I should do with them?  Me neither.  Because you and I both know that throwing them in the trash is out of the question.  I have bedroom that has imploded because all my scrapbooking stuff came to live there while we made room for the gaming to be done upstairs so that hubs could watch football on his own t.v. for the love.  In order to clean my bedroom, I have to assign a place for my craftiness.  I think I know this space but before I can put the craftiness in, I have to remove the bins of memories that I can't remember.  There are seriously 15 prequels to any given situation that I need to address in my home.  "But before that" should be the name of my house.  Fancy people name their homes.  I have been fancy a couple of times in my whole life so, I'm naming my house.  From now on, all invitations will read:  Please join us at But Before That at the corner of Awesome and Bombdiggity for high tea.  Formal attire is required.

One of the mantras I have created for myself is "What's next?".  I can't do tomorrow.  I can't do next year.  I can do now.  I can think of what's next.  That's it.  Beyond that and I'm encroaching on God territory.  Right now, I'm writing this.  Next, I'm crawling back into bed.  After that?  I don't know because I'm just writing this and then next is bed.  My kids HATE this mantra.  If there was a word stronger than hate, they would that.  When we are in the car, they often want to call dibs on an activity or food.  Can we have hot cocoa when we get home?  Bad example.  In this tundra, the answer is just yes.  Mom, when we get home can I play xbox?  I don't know.  Right now I'm just driving home.  What's next keeps me in this moment.  It means that I have to experience all of it so I can know what might be next.  I have to pay attention to my surroundings.  I'm eating breakfast and this kitchen is a mess.  What's next is crawling back into bed.  No, that's not right.  Next is cleaning it.  Of course it is.  I have to listen to my children.  What's next is giving them a time-out for what they just said to me.  No, wait.  Next is engaging them with questions or something to do. It's not easy.  Like what I said before, just there in the paragraph directly above this one, about how I don't even know what's before so I can't know what's next.  Working backwards to be able to move forward - well, I thought that was only for therapy but I guess it applies to tangible life as well.

There is another layer of "What's next?"  It's hope.  It's an openness to possibility.  It could sound like desperation or resignation as in "Great!  That's just great!  First the washing machine, then the sliding back door!  What's next?".  But I would rather be looking forward to what could be in store.  Hey God.  This has been a pretty interesting, confusing, brutiful journey thus far.  You rock out loud and only want the best for me.  So, what's next?  Ohhhhh right.  The kitchen. My nap.

the one about the management...

I had the most bizarre conversation yesterday.  It started off as it usually does, and as it should - catching up and laughing.  Admiring one another.  But as is the way with those all too infrequent "hey! we haven't seen each other in way too long and we need to finally get together and this time we mean it" onion meetings, you settle in chatting your way closer and closer to the core and it gets thicker and has more potential for crying, that's when it gets really good.

Here's what she said.  She said that she hung out with this family and that she could just feel the freedom and the joy in them and especially in their children.  What this family had was special and she wanted to know how to get it.  The mother told my friend that she made a decision a long time ago that she wasn't going to micro-manage her children.  I have to tell you that I have no idea what that means.  I thought I knew but then the more I thought about it, the more confused I got.  I had to actually message her today and make her explain what the hallelujah these people were talking about.  

I'm a control freak.  And until yesterday, I thought that was merely a symptom of being a mother.  Or a side-effect.  I thought that micromanaging was my JOB.  Isn't that we are supposed to do?  Follow them around telling them what they are supposed to be doing, how they should do it and then following up to make sure they did it and assessing that they are following all the safety procedures?  Like in-house OSHA.  I'm pretty sure that's how it was not ever explained to me.  I really thought that I was getting better about being controlling.  Apparently I'm not even close to understanding what controlling is so I am so far away from being cured or reformed, it's not even funny.

Here's how my friend "clarified" things.  She said "it means a foundational shift from controlling my kids with rules and boundaries, etc., to encouraging them to act in a way that promotes peace in our family because they love me, not because they are controlled by me".  I'm still picking up pieces of my mind from it being blown every which-a-way.

So, here I am with my 9 year old daughter.  She has a project due tomorrow.  My 7 year old son has the same project due tomorrow.  He has decided that he wants the F.  That is how much he doesn't want to do the work.  My daughter doesn't want to do the work either.  But she's not too keen to disappoint her teacher.  She loves that lady like crazy cakes.  We just got back from an A-MAY-ZING vacation.  That's a post for another time.  The point is that I brought back an inconvenient souvenir in the form of a head/chest cold possible sinus infection that I'll probably have to go see the doc about tomorrow.  I am in a sinus-aching, phlegm-flinging fog.  I don't have it in me to do these projects.  I have even less in me to fight about them just putting my words into their handwriting and turning it in.  If that dude wants an "F", I think I'm just letting him get the "F".  It isn't that I don't care about his grades.  I do.  It isn't as though there aren't consequences.  There are.  I just can't think them up right now.  I was thinking about making this one of those non-micromanaging Mom moments.  It's terribly convenient right now.  

Okay.  It's the next day now.  Sorry.  I had to finish the daughter's project.  And sleep.  And play Candy Crush.  Level 350 is vexing me.  It's been vexing me for weeks now.  So, yeah.  I finished the project with one of the kids.  The kids have to bring an "artifact" that represents what the cultural group (subject of project) contributed to our city.  I made the hubs drop off some schnecken.  I am totally hoping I bought off earned an A for her.  Especially since I haven't had schnecken this season and I will be very bitter that a bunch of first through third graders get to hate on something just because it has a few raisins in it and I didn't get any and it's truly like taking a stick of butter, wrapping some very sweet dough around it and then baking it.  I can endure a few minor raisin interruptions to the end result of that chunk of heaven.

The other offspring still isn't doing the project.  I haven't had a chance to talk to hubs about this whole not micro-managing thing.  But I'm pretty sure he is not going to be down with it.  I'm not saying he is a control freak also.  But I will say that anytime he has to ride shotgun while I'm driving, he has an imaginary brake that he grinds to the nub.  And last night he said that we have to make the son do things he doesn't want to do.  Like projects.  And clean his room.  

When we are first gifted these children, our job is to love them and to teach them how to be humans. "Don't eat that".  "Don't poop there".  It is like trying to domesticate a wild animal.   As they get older, we switch gears into teaching them how to become an adult. " Let's not ever talk about poop or farts again". "Eat protein!"  "Eat veggies!"  "Don't dress like her!"  "Don't hit girls."  "Don't hit anyone."  I have been longing to pick my battles for so long.  When you are a control freak - everything is the battle.  It all matters and it all has to be addressed and squared.  But I am realizing that as I try to ease up and pick those battles, I'm still micro-managing the details of the ones that qualify.  If the battle is "get dressed because we are leaving", then if they show up with clothing on, they have succeeded.  That should be the end of it.  But, it's not.  Because "are you wearing that?".  "You wore that yesterday.  And the day before.  And I'm pretty sure 2 days in a row prior".  Even when they are getting it right, they aren't getting it right.  That's a strong recipe for aholicism (insert whatever prefix), perfectionism and/or defeatism.  Or becoming a control freak.  There is very little freedom in that.  Or content.

I gotta run.  I just noticed another chunk of my mind under the couch.  And I am anxious to see if the daughter was grateful enough and thoughtful enough to save me some schnecken.  Then I have to remember not to fuss at her if she wasn't.  I am now noticing that NOT micro-managing seems to have infinitely more steps than micro-managing.  Bah.

The one about how it all begins...

That's right.  It's me again.  Revamped.  Retooled.  Ready.  Why?  Why am I doing this (yet) again?  Well, I'll tell ya.  I follow a blog by this amazing woman who is unabashed in her love of God and in sharing her struggles.  She is an author and creates words like "brutiful".  Have you seen a word quite so perfect?  Because life itself is all at once beautiful and brutal at the same time.  Anyway, on November 20, 2013 she told me to start writing again.  Prior to that, I wavered.  I wondered if I had anything to say.  If I was interesting, engaging.  I felt guilty for not posting and entirely too prolific to take in at on sitting when I did post.  But I missed it like crazy.  I missed the outlet.  I missed the stream of consciousness that I could let loose.  I missed the possibility that I could inspire or comfort just one person.  So when she posted this, I took a picture of it on my iPhone:

The answer is YES. You should write. Even though everything's already been said beautifully. Even though there's nothing new under the sun. Even so. Because there may be nothing new to say, but if you haven't spoken up yet - then there is a new VOICE to hear. That's all we have - our voices. No two are the same. No one sees the world QUITE like you do, and no one else can tell us your story QUITE like you could. You are our only chance to know you. You're it. If you yearn to use your voice and you don't - we will all suffer for it. Be brave. Be audacious enough to consider that your story is worth telling and your voice is worth hearing. The secret it- it IS. Your story and your voice are worthy of occupying some space in this world. Take it, Sister. Take your space.

So, this is me.   Taking my space.  Owning brave and audacious because that is who I believe myself to be in real life.  Why should my virtual life be any less?

I struggled with the theme this go around.  I had decided not to burden myself with resolutions in this, the year 2014.  I just want to hone in on one word that forms my habits, my decisions and my goals.  I have to keep it simple.  I started playing around with words as I so love to do.  And I thought about the word "intent".  I do want this to be the year I  am intentional.  I want to schedule in time with the people I love starting with my family.  I want it in pen (or at least virtual permanence in my synced up computer calendar).  I want a running lunch date with my main squeeze.  I want one-on-one time with each kid so I can learn more about them.  I want to take the pulse on the health of our entire unit on a regular basis because that heartbeat has started to slow a bit and it needs monitoring.  It needs maintenance to get stronger and louder.  I want to connect with my friends who are the people I choose to maneuver my life with.  They are a breath of fresh air and truth that keep me sane and grounded and encouraged.  I want to make sure that I remind people I share my life with that I love them and I couldn't do any of this without them.  I want to be intentional about my time with God.  Because I so haven't been.  I have been riding on the coattails of just accepting His sacrifice for me.  I have just been resting in the fact that I am a Christian and haven't been much on the side of growth in that.  But this has to be my biggest area of intent of all.  This is the relationship that drives all the others.  It's the one that is the sweetest and full of wonder.  I have GOT to be more intentional actively reveling in God.  Seriously, when's the last time I reveled?  At all?  You don't know.  Me neither.

Intent was good.  It's all actiony and purposeful.  But it wasn't the word.  Content.  That's the word.  It's all nuanced and hits just the right level of different meanings.  There's content in books and stories and movies.  There's content in recipes and pantries and rooms.  Contents are what might be hot inside that paper coffee cup and might burn you.  Contents are what is within.  I got contents.  Big time.  Too much, mostly.  I also will have content within this blog.  This is my content.   What I have to say.  The stories I have to tell and the thoughts I have to share.  Because, despite my only child bringing-up, I can sometimes share pretty good.  And here is the biggest part of content.  It's time to be satisfied with what I have.  I think that content has come to have a negative connotation.  I think it's considered stagnancy or settling for.  In this increasing time of excess and immediacy, content seems archaic and defeated.  But I don't believe that content is inactive.  I think that it is full of stretch (because tent is the root word and it comes from the Latin meaning stretch and strain.  Sorry.  I have a kid in Latin this year (and  the next 5 after) and it's upped the vocabulary all up in here).  It takes work to have content.  It takes intent - you have to go out and acquire what you have.  You have to think up things to put into a blog.  You have to take stock and say - rock on!  How lucky am I that I have.... That I get to....   That I know....  If you aren't noticing your content -what you DO have, you are robbing yourself of content - a sense of enjoying it and being in the now of it.

I had thought for a fleeting moment that I would concentrate my efforts on the word tent itself since it is in both inTENT and conTENT.  I thought about calling this "Jenny's tent" - like a shelter in the storm of crazy that can be out there as well as thoughts about being stretchy and strainy.  Then I thought about calling this "Jenny, the happy little camper" because then the tent would be implied and you camp in tents and it would be cute.  But I don't camp in tents.  And in my whole life I have never been a happy little camper because in my whole life I have never been happy camping.  Never.  Except at Pine Camp which was sleep-away camping for a week for kids who had military parents and there were girl bunks and boy bunks and we got to slow dance and had lots of drama and crushes and scary movies and lanyards.  Lots of flat plastic string lanyard weaving.  And the coldest showers with the biggest daddy long legs.  And shaving cream fights and canoeing and archery and water skiing.  I would camp like that again I think.  But other than that, I hate camping more than I can convey and if I went camping with my in-laws the way they keep asking me too, we would all be miserable because I am not a happy little camper and I would suck all happy out of their little camping trip.  So, obviously, this is called Jenny's Content.