Saying grace....

So, I am wondering how "Grace" before dinner goes at other people's houses.

At our house, for at least the last few weeks (maybe months, since summer) it has gone thus:

Mommy: I am thankful for----(insert different item here daily)

Daddy: I am thankful for---(insert some equally nice thing here)

Eldest son: Me and [my baby brother] are thankful for a

wonderful brother,

wonderful day,

wonderful meal,

that we will never die for a long long time,

and

for mothteetoes (mosquitoes)

All: Amen, Grace

Seriously, day upon day, so it goes.... a love of life and a fear of death, ahh, to be three.

What is it like at yours?

JMB

A short word of wisdom from an unexpected place...

I was listening to an Utne podcast about "How violent video game are making us smarter." I know that a lot of people want to comment on that, but I think that it was just the hook, something to get you to listen, but not the meat of the "story". It was about blah blah blah, gaming, blah blah blah.....

BUT

then there was a sweet small idea that some researcher got from these gamers that went on to become very successful.......

WAIT FOR IT,

You have to fail a lot to have great success.

Of course they went on to talk about other things, but first made the point that in order to gain mastery in these video games you have to try and fail A LOT. These researchers postulated that perhaps that willingness to risk failure enabled them to succeed in their career fields.

I think that a discussion could go many ways from here....but I think that I am going to just take the short sweet message of "failing a lot leads to success".

Ok.....let's go and risk some failure!

JMB

Complete-ness

About my word..... COMPLETE

I have forgotten it a few times this week. I think it was due to the fact that it is written HUGE right by my computer, but no where else in the house. So, this week, since Oldest Child thinks that going "nap-less" is very "in" this year, I have not been looking at my word, nor meditating on my word.

BUT, after I was prompted, I found this quote that I liked:

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

Dr. Wayne Dyer

(side note: I am going to look up this Dyer dude to make sure he is not some sort of psycho.)

This is something that I really need to learn in my heart...not just in my head, because I think that it is already there. That I am a complete and whole person, not an apprentice. I think it is all to easy to think that about yourself, you know "I can do something different, what I really want....next year."

This is a lie, I don't know when I even first started believing it. I may have told it to myself to just try to get through uncomfortable times, dangerous, numbing. Eventually, it just becomes a way of "living". "Living" meaning that you are getting by, you look really good, you can say the right things, but you are really small inside, you are scared, you are living a small life. Not risking joy, because you are afraid of failure....and you don't even really look at what failure is, but it is what you are living when you are living the life of an apprentice person.

And now I have found that I am not "on the way to someplace else" I am here, where I want to be. I need to get living.

So, I am off to risk some joy....
See you soon!

JMB

New Year.....

What to write about this year, 2007??

I don't know yet.

We are embarking upon some home repairs and updating. I think that we finally decided that we are NOT going to move for the next couple of years and so maybe we should have a home that is more functional and comfortable for our growing family.

I have lived here for 7 years, very monumental for me....I was always the "new girl" in school, I think that the longest I had ever lived in one place was 3.5 years. (Can you still think of yourself that way when you are approaching your mid-mid-thirties? I haven't even been in school for almost 10 years....time to update the ol' self image I guess.) So, yes, 7 YEARS!!!! A long time and I am still staring at the holes in the crown moulding that my lover (oooo la la, I just totally heated up this rather pedestrian blog) and I installed the first year we moved in here.

Well, I am tired of my unfinished projects. I deserve to finish them. I deserve to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. It is a rare thing around here...what might it actually feel like??
A sigh of relief?
The sweet, sweet release of the ever-growing lists of things that I have started and need to get done?

Yes, I will take one of those this year.

I would like to thank a good friend of mine for showing me the error of my ways. She will be known by her hipster name ALITHA. This summer we were working on a quilt together for a friend's wedding. The wedding was in a week and we still had a long way to go.

I was really in the mode of "finish it late, 'Biscuits and Gravy' will be so busy on her wedding day, she will never notice."

But that ALITHA, she said to me "Why wouldn't we just want to get it done, B&G will really love seeing it, it will be so special."

So, I was a bit annoyed,
How was it going to get done? Blah, blah, blah, my usual chorus for putting off for tomorrow what can be done today. And of course the only bad thing that I could think about ALITHA was....

Eeeeww, you finisher, you.

That is when I thought about all of the projects she gets done, finished, COMPLETED! We both started a log cabin quilt at the same time, like....9 YEARS AGO. Hers has been on her bed for years now, I think that she actually wants to update it......where is mine?? Oh yeah, cut up in strips, in a box, hidden from view.

Long story short, we finished the quilt and the look on B&G's face as she opened the quilt was so sweet. She loved it. It was finished. There were no loose ends, the project was off my list. A discrete check mark, one less thing to worry over or feel small about.

Thanks ALITHA!! You, finisher you.

So 2007, what about that?

Originally, I picked "CREATE" as THE word for my new year. After writing this, I realize that I am good at the "creating thing", I struggle with what comes next. And so in recognition of things that I would like to have as my own in this new year, I am re-choosing (I can do that, I am the boss of me) COMPLETE.

Because I am, and I can!

(thanks em, I needed to write.)
JMB