Mom is Just a Nickname

I’m eating Dora the Explorer vanilla yogurt. That’s better than the banana kind I’ll be eating before too long. I got them for X, hoping that the colorful cartoon character would convince him to eat some. No such luck. Now I’m stuck eating it. (I prefer my plain yogurt, nice and tangy and not laden with sugar.)

Eating his yogurt now is about more than just not letting the food go to waste. I need the yogurt containers! They are by far the easiest container to convert into pots for my seedlings! I’ve got loads of seedlings and I’m trying to transplant them over to pots now, to give their roots more space.

I’ve got yogurt cups, a cut up two liter soda bottle, a frosting container, a margarine container, cut up water bottles…the list goes on. Anything I’ve been able to scrounge that is the right size and I can poke holes in will do. I’m so desperate I’ve eaven asked Toph to keep watch for things at work. Steal the co-workers’ trash so I can recycle it into pots for my baby plants!!!

How did this happen? How did I forget to plan ahead and save yogurt cups ahead of time?

So, do you have any water bottles, yogurt cups, or ANYTHING I can use?!?!

I’m excited this morning by how my plants are thriving. I’ve got “flats” of seedlings that are getting taller by the day! I’ve got a mint cutting that had looked dead but is now putting off new leaves! My rosemary cutting is still green and bright and seems to be doing well. I just got a new cutting of a plant called ‘wandering Jew’ and I got it potted last night. Even the one potted herb I have, feverfew, is doing well!

It’s such a small thing to be happy about, but it’s thrilling to see my plants doing well.

.^.*ScAtTeR*.^.

Re-reading my last posts about “what do you believe?” keeps making my brain go on to the next question, “Why do you believe what you believe?” I already explained some of my reasons for why, but I think it’s an important question for anyone to consider, even if you don’t share the reasons with anyone. I’m more frustrated by people who don’t ever ask that question of themselves than I am by just about anything else. I think not asking “WHY?” can lead too easily to a ‘herd mentality’ (where everyone goes with the flow and stays safe in the herd).

.^.*sCaTtEr*.^.

We’re setting up a fish tank. So far we just have water in with the filters running, but I still enjoy looking and listening to it. My kids and cats are entranced by it too. It’ll be fun to watch everyone enjoying it even more once we get plants and fish into it.

.^.*ScAtTeR*.^.

I couldn’t concentrate on one topic for this post. My brain is hopping from one idea to another today, so you got a scatterbrained post! Enjoy!

As a follow up to my last post, “I believe…?” I came across a news article through yahoo.com, “Group Files Suit Over ‘I Believe’ plates in SC.”

I see this in two ways. One, I’m glad that similar legislation failed in Florida. It’s hard enough to get along with people from different religions and backgrounds (and Florida is nothing if not filled with diversity) because of percieved DIFFERENCES between everyone. Better to find ways to emphasize the things we have IN COMMON.

Two, if the states offer private groups special plates with a number of prepaid orders, or flat out cash of a certain amount, as long as they don’t discriminate against any group why not let religious groups have their plates? It is another way for the government to generate money, I assume. Personally, I liked it when all the plates from a state looked the same, without all of the different backgrounds. I’m all for simplicity though.

Still that question remains…”What do you believe?”

I see these bumper stickers around all the time:  “I believe.”  That’s all they say, except maybe some fine print I’m never close enough to catch.  I always want to ask the folks driving the cars, “What is it you believe??  You believe in Jesus?  You believe in the United States?  You believe in Mother Earth?  You believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?  What? What do you believe??”

But then I turn those questions around on myself: What do I believe?

It’s a difficult question for me to answer for a few different reasons.  I see value in many different paths. I see similarities in just about all of the world’s “big” religions (and many of the smaller, less well known as well!)

I have also counted the scars on my son’s body, left by several surgeries and procedures which were meant to prolong his life, to give him the chance to live a good life.  I have ranted and raved against whatever Powers That Be for the way my son suffered during his short life.   My experiences with my son opened up whole new avenues for my mind to follow.

His life opened up my eyes to the good in humanity, to the value of community, to the positive (and negative) ways that belief and faith can impact each of our lives.  But even while I discovered all of these things, my heart was empty of belief and faith in anything except the mantra of taking each minute, one by one.  I could not look too far ahead and I could not look too far behind.  If I did either of those, I felt my hollow heart would shatter.

This is why today, I am still asking myself “What do I believe in?”  The only answer I have is that I believe in love, in family, in my own ability to look terrible circumstances in the eye and know that I can survive.

When Sullivan was in the hospital the first time, I held close to my heart the words from Peter Pan: “All it takes is faith and trust and a little bit of pixie dust…”  I think I was a bit naive when I took those to heart, but I still see value in them.  It did take faith and trust (in ourselves, in the doctors and in Sullivan) to give him the chances he had in his life.  It did take faith and trust (that life would go on) after he died.  And if there’s a pixie dusting me with her dust, maybe that explains why I’ve been able to keep searching for something bigger than myself to believe in, even after feeling like God let us down when Sullivan stopped breathing that cold December day in 2000.

What do you believe?

I have been blessed to have known wonderful men and fathers in my life.  Both of my grandfathers, my own father, my father-in-law, and my husband are all men who have contributed much love and care into my life.  I’m thankful for each of them.