Worst Mother of the Day

I thought I'd just - for the heck of it - throw my hat in the ring for this one. After all, I let my kids play in the street water after it rains and in the hail (but it was small hail, fun to eat and I didn't know there was a tornado warning yet). Today started out quite good. Asher didn't get up until 6:30, but then he self entertained. And Harper was happy in her crib until around 7:30. But shortly after, Asher decided it was THE day to be bandito Asher, aka big, bad brother. So for a good two hours, I attempted to do a little bit of clean up, breakfast making and feeding, and dressing while Asher was a bandito, perching on the living room chair and darting out to steal Harper's baby and blanket ("gengki" as she screeched it) while also serving a good dose of hits, kicks and whips with Mardi Gras beads. I lost count of how many time outs Asher had and how many toys he lost the privelege of using (don't even ask me about the foam swords he can't use for a few days).

I decided it was finally time to take the two bags of bread heels I'd been saving to the duck pond and feed the birds there, something new and exciting, and the weather was beautiful. Oh, yes, I was thinking, mother of the day, right here. Innocently enough, I made two phone calls on the way and found out that I had a slight emergency with the youth conference I'm working on - a surprise extra 10 attendees!

We unloaded at the duck pond and had a good time chasing geese, not worrying about all the goose poop on the walkway, throwing bread willy-nilly, watching the stork float around the pond, eating bread willy-nilly, watching for more geese and ducks to feed. Shortly after we arrived, the geese started to migrate to another part of the pond, so we started a nice walk around the pond.

We stopped at an inlet where Asher wanted to walk down and see if he could find any more birds to feed. "Careful," I told the kids, urging them to step back from the water. I snapped some good pictures of the kids, the pond and the Rocky Mountains to our west. It was gorgeous! My phone rang, a call back about the surprise emergency, and I answered it. As I was hanging up, I saw Harper f a l l i n t o the water - threw my phone down, tried to reach her from the shore as she started to sink face first, yelled s*%! several times, water closing over her back, stepped in, grabbed the back of her overalls and hoisted her up, wondered if I could remember CPR, checked her face to see that she was surprised, soaking wet but perfectly fine. THANK GOD. I was shaking, and a woman asked if she was okay. No thanks to me, yes. Harper burped, and I wondered how much of the filthy pond water she had taken in. Sweet Asher looked at me and said, "Harper almost floated away." Again, thank God.

We enjoyed the rest of our walk, my shoes squishing and my clothes almost completely wet and Harper drying slowly in the sun, and almost two more hours together at the pond. I was so shaken at one point that I wanted to verify with someone that Harper was indeed okay - was I imagining her walking beside me? Thank God I wasn't. Needless to say, I didn't let either Asher or Harper get closer than three feet from the edge of the bank, and I learned a valuable lesson about multi-tasking.

My New Favorite Personality Test

The Myers-Briggs typology will probably always be a favorite personality test of mine - as an INTJ, I love systems! and gaining more knowledge about myself and my friends - but recently one of my co-workers introduced me to True Colors, a personality test with four categories that are color based. We spent one of our staff meetings learning what our colors are, what each others' colors are, and the strengths, weaknesses and ways to communicate with each other. We all had fun during the meeting.

I am green and feel so at home with systems, knowledge, deep thinking, efficiency, analyzing and not following rules that don't make any sense (this may have been the biggest ahha for me - I am typically a rule follower but how irritated I get by nonsense rules!). It's always fun for me to understand more why I act the way I act and how to communicate better with other people. As a green, I tend towards information and shy away from emotional, people interaction (so don't ever be shy about calling or e-mailing me for purely informational reasons); although, life has taught me the importance of friends and taking the time for emotions and sharing emotions with others. You can join the fun by taking a free test at www.truecolorscareer.com/quiz.asp.

Maybe I'll Just Pitch a Hammock

Even though I am often thinking about the future and future plans, I still don't have much patience waiting for things to happen in the future. Take previously described new garden bed - I know it will get better and better each year, but I want an instantly beautiful garden with big wonderful hollyhocks, spreading Russian sage and phlox that has multiplied all over the place. I can envision it so why isn't it THERE already! Patience, patience.

I am improving in my sense of things happening in the future. Owning a home has helped. While I will gratify my urgent desires by making lists of projects, I can also see how over time the projects will unfold through the years, how I can space the projects out and still be quite happy in my home (perhaps happiest in the spring when I can get out, ride around the gorgeous old town neighborhood under the spreading trees and past blossoming plants, getting out of rooms I obsessed about during cold weather). Patience, patience.

Perhaps it's finally being in my thirties, but I am starting to see the unfolding of seeds I planted or didn't plant many years ago - the resulting community that I live in. I get a sense that, not to break a deeply emotional and complicated human experience down solely to economics, relationships - how we treat others - are investments. Not karma but the results of how I've been with others. More and more I value and consciously nurture my friendships because like so many things in life (my the list is long, when I consider it - education, cars, houses, kids, pets, gardens, retirement accounts, anything with a future) what I put in now will directly affect what they are like in the future. Relationships are long term projects, unfolding over and through the hills, down cliffs, up steep climbs, beside the ocean. How clearly I see the consequences of choices.

While feeling this investment immediately, and the importance of now, I also am intimidated by the consequences of my choices and the power I hold in what I do and do not do. How much effort I put into projects at work - what I choose to push forward - may make a profound change in the future. I found at St. John's that my education was what I put into it. If I didn't read, didn't participate in class, didn't engage, I lost. I can feel now that life also is what I choose to make of it. Change is now (if you have a chance to see the "Great Debators" do so - I cried when Samantha debated at the University of Texas. I get chills thinking about it).

Maybe I should have better understood investments and choices earlier - I think several people tried to get me to really understand. I suppose I fumbled along fairly well. Sometimes the power of my choices is deeply energizing and sometimes it is deeply overwhelming to the point that I want to pitch a hammock in my new garden and stay there to watch it come to life. Swing life away.

Transplant

Wow - how this month as passed me by. I suppose it's the gearing up for the annual Reformed Youth Movement conference, the garden planting, the working, the time to enjoy being outside, the watching the weather to see if my town was going to be hit by a tornado (for which, I don't have quite a category for in Colorado - so common in Alabama but not here, though common enough that we have sirens and a speaker system which tells us to take cover and when things are all clear. I felt a little like I was in a communist country with a deep male voice broadcasting all over the city), the enjoying of my fascinating children, the sorting through requests for grant writing, and the spending of wonderful time with good friends.

I got it into my head to turn the back six feet of my backyard into a new garden bed, joining it with one already there. I have a great vision of a huge garden back there, that I can look at from kitchen windows. But classic Alexa - good idea but with little consideration of the execution (though I did plant low maintenance and low water plants so I at least thougth about my energy in the future). It's actually turned out quite good so far, but the time and investment was more than I thought it would be. A lot more. Perhaps, I should also step back from my perfect view of the garden and let it unfold some on it's own. Just relax!

As a part of the big plan, I moved a Russian sage from another side garden to the back garden to give it more space and sun. I put the dear, two-year-old plant in the ground, and within minutes (and I do mean minutes) it wilted. Oh, the shock! it said to me. Why did you tear me away from my cozy home? What did you do to my roots?

I have tried not to obsess about this plant, tried so hard not to anthropromorphize the lovely thing, tried not to let it keep me up at night. The first day, I checked in the plant regularly. I talked to Michael about my worries. I check on it daily. I've even stroked it a few time and encouraged it that things will be okay. I may have even prayed for it. Well, it's still not happy about the move, but I think it's putting up a fight.

The transplant made me think of a close friend who found out last Friday that she and her family will - baring a miracle - have to move out of state for her husband's job. They don't know where yet or when, and she's brokenhearted. Her family moved to Longmont with the intention of staying and minstering in this community. After seven years and with kids now in high school, they are facing a move again. Transplanting is hard, and in plant speak, there is actual shock.

How I pray that my friend will be able to stay in Longmont. Selfishly, I've had enough of friends moving away. I am brokenhearted about being the side garden who seens dear friends lifted from their homes to far away gardens. No doubt, transplanting can be a good thing - potted plants sometimes are ready to be transplanted, needing a bigger pot, outdoor plants sometimes need new locations, and organ transplants save lives (and, as I just discovered online, random, can give a person a new face). I pray such becomes the case with my friend's transplant.