Mom is Just a Nickname

And I find this very frustrating.

I’ve been a stay at home mom for the better part of ten years. It’s my JOB to keep the house in order and to care for the kids. I’ve tried creating my own routines, based on what I do anyway but with tweaks here and there to make them more efficient. I’ve tried using things like Flylady, which is supposed to give a person some shape to the days.  None of these seem to help.

I’d like a routine for a few reasons.  First of all, I get so tired of looking at my messy house.  Granted, it’s not as messy now as it has been in the past.  We’ve done better with keeping up with it since moving to this house.  But it’s never as nice as I’d like it, unless I’ve just busted my butt for a day or two to make it shine.  That quickly fades, though, no matter my good intentions.

I read about other families whose children happily fall in line with an orderly day.  They get up, they make their beds, they get dressed, they eat breakfast….etc. Everything falls into place.  This is not what happens in my house.  There are days (as there have been this week) that we simply don’t get our acts together and get dressed until late in the day.  Ok, so if you go to work (or school) each day, that may seem like such a luxury.  I know Toph often says he envies us our ability to take it slow.  I’d rather get up and moving and feel like I’ve accomplished something in a day.

Obviously, something is holding me back.  Some inner something is overriding my desire to have a clean house and to have productive days.  Is it laziness?  Is it boredom?  Is it some chemical imbalance in my head?  Is it a lack of purpose?  On any given day I’ll answer yes to every one of those. I don’t know what causes it.  I wish I did because then maybe I could get my act together for longer than a couple of weeks.

Sometimes I just get so sick of being me.  Sick of not being able to stick to something for any length of time.

I heard this song on the radio today: Tim McGraw’s Live Like You Were Dying. It got me to thinking of what makes a good romance novel. Ok, Ok, I guess there are those of you who read this who can’t put “good” and “romance novel” in the same sentence, but I can. In a good romance novel, the hero and the heroine eventually seem to decide to live like they are dying….they love sweeter, they become the spouses they should have been from the start, and they spend time with each other in ways that people don’t in every day life. It’s part of the charms of these books, part of what makes them so escapist too.

It puts a new spin on what I’m trying to write. It’s something for me to think on.

I miss writing on here every day.  Not posting every day makes the alphabet game drag on, and then I feel bad for not posting the next letter.  So I don’t post anything at all. What a vicious cycle.

We spent Memorial Day weekend at my parents’ house, visiting with my aunts and uncles and my parents, of course.  It was a weekend of family recipes.  My parents had sangria made; my uncle Dave made empanadas on Saturday evening; my mom made frittatas for breakfast on Sunday.  Then we had a late lunch/early dinner of my aunt Dot’s enchiladas that night.  The next morning, it was just the four of us and my parents.  My mom made coffee cake, like she and dad used to make when me and my sibs were growing up.  Lunch on Sunday was simply leftovers (boy, did we have leftovers!) and finger foods: french bread, sliced pepperoni, sliced salami, porsciutto (I don’t know if I spelled that right. hrm.) and  sliced cheeses.

The really fun part of the weekend was on Saturday night when my parents pulled out my grandfather’s old slide projector and slides.  There were so many pictures of my parents, aunts and uncles as teenagers (or younger) and plenty of me and my cousins and sibs when we were babies/toddlers/preschoolers.  It’s always fun to hear what the generation before has to say about those days.  The stories they tell are fun and sometimes embarrassing. ha!

We came home from the weekend with 5 baby oak trees, a bunch of iris, and a tiger lily plant ready to be split.  My dad dug them all out of his yard and gave them to us to use to beautify our rather barren yard.  Toph and the kids helped me dig the trees and the lilies into the yard when we got home.  The kids and I will get the iris in the ground sometime this week. J is very eager to help with that, so I have to do it some afternoon after she’s home from school.

Speaking of school, next week is J’s last week of fourth grade! It is amazing how time flies.  Scary, kind of.  She’s nine now, and as Toph likes to point out, she is halfway to becoming an independent adult of 18.  Next school  year, X will start preschool and J will be in fifth grade.  My mornings, at least, will be my own…although, I will be devoting more time to writing, I still don’t think I’ll quite know what to do with myself.  Get a job, that’s the popular answer.  X will only be gone a few hours in the morning, though, so a job may not be feasible just yet.  We shall see.

I think the writing sounds good, if only I didn’t have to deal with submitting and receiving rejections.  No, it’s not even that that bothers me.  It’s the research to find the people to submit to that leaves me feeling helpless and lost.  The whole networking thing often feels beyond me, and the whole research thing takes up time I’d rather spend WRITING!!!!!  I’ve got to get that balance figured out before too long, I guess.

That’s the update for now…life keeps on moving ahead, whether we will or no.

Ok, so I’ve already done one post about a place in Florida, B is for Boca Raton.  But Florida is such a large state, and there is so much to see!  Having spent a large part of my childhood in Florida, I still sometimes see some of the wonder of childhood when I look around my world today.

For example, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been to Walt Disney World in Orlando.  My mom took us as often as she could when we were little.  We’ve gone several times since 2006, in large part thanks to my mother.  The Magic Kingdom DOES still hold a magic appeal to me, though.  There’s something incredible about a place where adults are encouraged to give in to that willing suspension of disbelief, and give themselves over to the joys of childhood.  Although I know it is a theme park built to make money, it is also a place of magic and dreams.

The beaches of Florida are also magical places for me.  I’ve soaked up the hot, tropical sun while chasing the myriad of shells which wash up on the shores.  I’ve dug to find mollusks and sea fleas as they burrowed into the sand wherever the waves set them down.  I’ve watched in awe as baby sea turtles scuttled to the ocean one morning.  I’ve seen pink sandy beaches with clear, aqua water, and I’ve seen muddy beaches with thick, black water.  I’ve seen beaches so strewn with shells I was reluctant to walk barefoot on them and other beaches so rocky that barefeet weren’t even an option.  I’ve been a small child, knocked over by the strength of the waves.  I’ve been a mother, holding the small child steady in the swell of the waves.  I’ve felt the power of the sand, the sun and the sea when they combine together to form a healing haven for my heart.

Florida is a state of extremes.  From the exotic and urban South to the less touristy, rural North, Florida holds a multitude of attitudes, beliefs, lifestyles and TREASURES.  It is a state that is near and dear to my heart, the place I was born, but I’ve never quite considered it home.  As familiar as I am with the Sunshine State, it always feels more like I’m a visitor, maybe even a tourist.

Although being a tourist, and doing touristy things can be fun, sometimes it’s fun to wander to places a little farther off the beaten track:

Florida State Parks

Bok Sanctuary

The Morikami

The Flagler Museum

The Everglades, online

I added a new page to the blog, to be found in the top menu bar: “My Short Stories”.  I’m working on migrating  the short stories from my other blog to this one.  You can find the first of them already there.  It’s called “An Unexpected Reunion.”  I’ve included a link to my other blog, My Muse Speaks Softly, in case you want to check out the others before I get them over here!

Enjoy!