Mom is Just a Nickname

I’ve read that dreams cannot come true until we acknowledge them and release them into the world. Until we plant the seeds, giving them soil and water to germinate, they cannot grow.

I’ve also read that today is a great day to plant some dreams. It is the first day of the year, the first day of a new decade, in fact.  Only slightly better was ten years ago today, when we started a new year, a new decade and a new century all at once.  Still, in order to plant these dreams on this auspicious day, I would have to know what these dreams are.

I have a dream….no, that phrase has been used…

Well, I’m in school now. I started back a year ago.  I’m working to earn my Bachelor’s in Education so that I can teach.  I feel like I’ve always wanted to teach, to work with young kids.   So, that’s one dream…that I will work hard and make good progress towards the goal of the Bachelor’s degree this year.

We have also bought a new home this fall.  So, I have this dream of making into a warm, welcoming sanctuary for family and friends.  I have this dream of it being an active hub for the kids’ friends and ours.  I have this vision that it can be a restful place. Can it be both an active hub and a restful place all at once?  I guess time will tell.

I also have this vision of my yard in this place being a beautiful garden, that I will be able to work in it and enjoy the process of changing it from just a yard to a place of sanctuary for me and for wildlife.  I’m such a novice gardener…I guess time will tell here too.

More dreams linger…turning my garage into MY place. I have a workshop there already, but it’s very unfinished and basic…I want to decorate it.  This dream may be years in the future though, I guess.

If dreams must be planted in order to germinate and grow…and each dream takes its own sweet time to grow…time will tell how big these dreams get.  Dreams in the darkness of the year, soon to be exposed to the sunshine, the rain and the harsh weather of reality.

Our NYE is going to be spent at home. We’ll probably watch the Muppets Movie and eat popcorn. We may burn a giant sparkler my dad left with us at some point. We may drink champagne. We may ….

Go to bed early. Early, even for us. The kids want to stay up until midnight, but Toph and I are more interested in sleep than ringing in the new year.

Is that terrible? Are we boring? Oh well.

Missing: One cell phone. If found, please return to my daughter.

And earlier this week, my phone was lost…thankfully, it’s been found. What’s with losing phones this week?!

This blog is mostly defunct. Maybe the new year will change that. Maybe it won’t. It’s not as if I don’t have a million and one other things to do.  In September, we got a new dog. She’s an Australian Shepherd, about a year old, and in need of training and amusement.  Then in November, we bought a house.  So, of course, there’s all of the unpacking, organizing, and decorating to do there (not to mention the cleanup of the old house).

I’ve just finished my second semester in school.  It was a rough one and I didn’t finish everything I was supposed to, but luckily in the program I’m in, the class I didn’t finish will carry over.  By January 1, I’ll be starting a new semester and have more schoolwork to do.

Here’s to 2010 and the new adventures it will bring.

This blog was about my journey away from being just a mom.  And then I got so caught up in other things, I forgot to keep posting. Terrible, I suppose.  Today, my life involves being a mom, a wife, a friend, a struggling student thrown back into the harsh waters of school, an amateur gardener, and an amateur crochet-er.  I flip between the different roles with difficulty. I spend a whole month with my focus narrowed down to just one interest and then abruptly set that aside to focus on something else.  It’s an ongoing struggle to remain focused on any one thing for as long as it takes to finish it.

I also struggle with the feeling that I am tied so closely to someone else that his moods, his preferences…hell, his very presence so directly affect what I do with my life. I read in a book once (I think…can’t remember specifically) the idea of one spouse being like a spring who was only wound up to action when the other spouse was present…and I can relate to that feeling.  Life seems more real and more active when Toph is around.  It is a weird thing to me, to feel that life is on ‘pause’ when he is at work.  I struggle to be productive even though he is gone and it is frustrating to me.  I begin to feel that I have little internal motivation at all.  And it scares me, because what will happen to me if anything should take Toph out of my life permanently? How then will I go on and get done what needs doing?

I write this out of the need to remove the idea from my brain, where it has been resting heavily for many days now.  I expect that very few people ever read this blog anymore with any regularity since my last posts are so old and, imo, kind of uninspired.  What happened to being able to dig into my brain for something deeper than ‘hey these jeans fit me well!” oi.