How To Teach Your Kids That You Will Have The Last Word... And Assure Them They Will Love You For It...

I have discovered that my OUTLOOK program archived some of the posts and comments from my old blog.  As I recently said to someone, who knew it could do that?  My brain then immediately spit out (it tends to do that on occasion), "Probably every one else on the planet..."  Anyway, rereading them made me realize that I had not kept up with so many family and friends.  So since I have just oodles and oddles of free time in my life, I get to sit on a satin cushion every day and eat Bon Bons I sent off a few emails while I sat waiting for the kids to get out of school.

Letting my thoughts wander...

Relationships, I have pondered recently, are like wine are like flower gardens.  Over tend them and you'll be needing a ten step program, like too much rain, the flowers will rot and die.  Under tend them and your friends will drop you like Chuck Norris until the bar is restocked, and life slowly withers away from an abundance of weeds and a lack of water, nutrients and oxygen.   My every day worries (one word: teenagers), to-do lists (that are currently so long that the Guinness Book of World Records has confirmed it as a record), responsibilities and even laziness (*hand raised*) have created my particular crowd of weeds.  I have let these things wrap around me, making it almost impossible for me to see the rest of the flower garden that is my life.  So I now have a mental list of things I'm trying to remember every morning (see above for laziness because I'm sure you want to ask why I don't just write it down on paper like normal folk... or maybe have it tattooed on my forehead...) before I stumble or get dragged get out of bed in the morning, just so...  maybe subconsciously (I believe in miracles), I can attempt the unattainable work on what is truly important to me in my life (a very serious, AMEN)  and letting the less important things slide for a bit.  My family and friends are important to me.  Figuring out how to balance that which is most important with everyday responsibilities is incredibly hard.  I suspect it will be a balancing act that never truly stays balanced.  I am aware that it will never be perfect because, I am not perfect.  And that's ok as long as I do my best and don't give up.  

Hence the emails...

Thoughts wandering some more...

What does this have to do with teaching your kids that you will have the last word and they will love you for it?  I'm getting there...  I'm merely trying to describe the progression of thoughts that pass through my mind to arrive at said post title.  Come to think of it, my method bares an eerie resemblance to the children's book, "If You Give A Moose A Muffin".  (Which, by the way, was actually my favorite out of this series.  I knew you were dying to ask that question...) 

 [Warning: The following has absolutely nothing to do with the post at hand.  It is merely a stray thought... I repeat, it is merely a stray thought... Please stay awake calm until the certifiable idiot writer has completed this thought process, and should you not be able to remain conscious, you will be awoken when it is finally over you will be returned to the current post at hand... We appreciate your patience while we attempt to dress said 'writer' in an 'I love me jacket' with this technical difficulty... "Why is it, that when your brain thinks/problem solves in this wandering kind of manner when you are a teenager, it's considered 'thinking outside the box', but if you think/problem solve in this wandering kind of way when you are forty-five, you are considered delusional and your doctor is likely to recommend that your family reserve you a bed in a the furthest geographical Psychiatric Ward?"  If this had been a real long thought, you would have been abandoned at the first opportunity, like a rat on a sinking ship, leaving you to the visual torture often accompanied by the stray thoughts of this particular writer instructed to click the box with the little 'x' in it for immediate relief close this web page.  We thank you for your patience.  We now return you to your normal current post.

**Alarm Clock buzzing loudly**]

Thoughts now getting lost...

I tend to pay attention to the wanderings of my mind which, on occasion, tend to drown (figuratively not literally, fear not) my family and friends in  long and descriptive narratives.  Guaranteed to put any of them to sleep. So naturally, they attempt to avoid me like the plague the minute I open my mouth.  Bless their little hearts, because escape from my loquaciousness is futile... most of the time.  One more reason to avoid visiting our house.  Fortunately for them they have learned to tune me out, I actually DO have an intelligent (my own personal descriptive opinion, others may believe otherwise, so be aware, results may vary...) thought.  

My wandering thoughts have arrived.  Thankfully, I'm a woman, so I know how to stop and ask for directions...

My wandering thoughts were of emails. Of family. Of friends we lose contact with... With those we reconnect with and learn all the wonderful things and all the disheartening things of their lives.  (NOW we have finally arrived at the actual post... just thought I'd point that out in case you missed it...) Which led my thoughts to a gift I received from my daughter, Danielle, that has created something that, hopefully, some day I can give back. 
 

This past Mother's Day, my daughter, Danielle gave me a blank, leather journal.  I had no idea what I was going to use it for, because I didn't want to use it for every day notes and then tear the pages out.  So the thought came to me to write notes, thoughts, memories, advice etc FOR Danielle, for her to have  just before I strangle her and hide the body when I am gone.  Once I started writing in it, I knew I had to write journals for all of our daughters, because they are all so very different and amazing and wonderful and, at times, incredibly awe-inspiring.  But let's be honest here, sometimes they are also incredibly awful.  So am I, for that matter.  It's what makes us human.  We are not infallible.

So I promptly went and bought four more journals.  This is actually less daunting than you might think.  I don't write in them every day... or week... or even month. Sometimes I write a book, most times it's just a sentence or paragraph.  Eventually, I'm sure I will have at least one single word entry.  It just depends on what is going on in our lives and the time I have sitting in waiting rooms for appointments, or waiting in the car to pick up one of the kids, etc.  

I now wish I had started these gifts to my children when our eldest was born.  There are so many firsts.  There are more diapers... and less sleep.  There are more opportunities to see life through their eyes... and you learn more about bodily fluids than you ever wanted to know.  Ah, the education that life gives us.  My kids are now aged twelve through nineteen and since I hope to be still irritating them for another forty-five years, I feel like it is not too late to fill as many of those blank pages I can, in the time I'm given.  Special memories, feelings, thoughts and advice.  Memories being created today and all the special memories to come.  I'm not leaving out the hard times or the sad times.  All of our time makes us who we are.  It's up to us how wisely we use this time. 

QOTD: "Don't count every hour in the day, make every hour in the day count." ~ unknown