Papoe

Certificates of Appreciation

I wake up some mornings and wish that I was a Penelope: a super-ultra-over-the-top-organized woman with a label maker secured to my mom toolbelt and a Certificate of Appreciation in Calligraphy mounted on my office wall. Penelopes make lists. But wait a minute… I make lists. I make lists on random pieces of paper, and then I make new lists because the first list gets lost, and I end up at the store with no list and forget to buy the most important items for dinner. And my office consists of a corner in the living room, blocked by the couch so that the babies can’t stick cords in their eyes. Not worthy of a certificate. Unless the certificate says, “Congratulations! You haven’t scarred your children. Yet.”

The New Year means that I can try again. I can find a way to keep the floor clear of Cheerios and make sure that the laundry makes it out of the basket and back into the proper drawer. My new job (full-time!) will test my ability to get the girls out of the house without applesauce coated in their hair, and I will hopefully find time to read a book outside of the bathroom.

If I can keep track of all the girls’ socks, the year will be a success.

I don’t know if that’s setting the bar high or low. There will certainly be more exciting moments to count on than finding a matching sock. Perhaps I should have asked for something techie for Christmas to organize my life, like my friend Becki. Oh wait, this wasn’t really what she meant when she said she wanted an iPad.

Considering I can’t keep peanut butter and jelly off my laptop, I don’t think new technology will help my closets from overflowing (but I’m sure there is an App for that). My to-do list for the new year is growing by the minute. First things first: buy a new notebook so that I can write my to-do list. It helps if it’s pretty.

 

Are you a Penelope?

If you were given a Certificate of Appreciation, what would it be for?

Snuggle up to Christmas

This was taken last night by my dear husband, who knows me well enough to know that an A's Snuggie would make me smile. It's big enough to cover our whole family of four and it's so ugly, it's beautiful. And yes, that's the Yule Log burning on the television. We used our own holiday soundtrack, highlighted by Autumn Wind is a Raider and GoGo Christmas, prompting the best Christmas dance party I've seen in quite some time. My smile says it all: I'm thankful... now where did my wine go?

Reverb10, Day 25. Prompt: Photo - a present to yourself. Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

Happy Christmas!

Santa teaches important life lessons (and other lies)

It’s the eve of Christmas Eve and we’re prepping for a small family gathering tomorrow night, complete with turkey, sweet potato pie, and wine. The presents are wrapped, the laundry is done, the lights are up, and we are looking forward to watching the girls tear open their gifts and play with the boxes and gift tags.

We kept it small this year, with one big gift for the two of them (a kitchenette), and some stuffies for their stocking. But then those are actually from Santa.  At least, in my world, they are from Santa. Khary lives in a different world. Apparently all the kids in DC were bad and Santa never visited. He claims that he doesn’t want to lie to our girls.

But what’s the harm in a little holiday imagination?

One year, when I was about five or six, I woke up in the middle of the night to see if Santa had visited. Now, I may have known that Santa didn’t exist, but I didn’t care. I knew that there would be a few extra gifts under the tree. Scattered amongst the wrapped gifts were new items—unwrapped items (because gifts from Santa are never wrapped, something that it up for debate in certain circles).

And there it was: a beautiful blue jewelry box. For me.

Only it wasn’t. I returned to bed, woke up in the morning, walked out into the living room, and saw my mom admiring her new beautiful blue jewelry box.

Yeah, sometimes Santa sucks. But that’s life. And my girls are going to learn about life the good old-fashioned hard way.

In the meantime, we’re going to love every minute of this Christmas.

The C word

I was once accused of not having any compassion. This lead to a long-running joke with family and friends—to the extent that when the word compassion was mentioned in my wedding vows, I think my mom snorted.

Now I have never been a touchy-feely person. You’d sooner see me shed a tear out of frustration before I ever pulled out a Kleenex during a sappy movie. Bad breakup? Suck those tears up and let’s go drink off the stink of another loser. This is not to say that I don’t want to listen to your problems. I love hearing other people’s problems, so long as they aren’t bitching just to bitch.

There was compassion under the surface. Then I had children, and it seeped through and bubbled over.

One child made me sensitive. Two children made me a puddle of mush. The first sign was when I teared up while listening to a radio commercial about drunk driving. I got a tear in my eye from WORDS, that I couldn’t even read (I’m in the visual camp. I don’t hang with the auditory kids.) It was at that moment that I knew there was no turning back.

So I embraced it. I blame my girls, but I also have to thank them for it. Motherhood creates an instant bond between mothers (or at least the ones that drink wine) in a way that I never would have expected. I want all of our kids to be happy, not just my own. Yes, I've gone soft. I won’t go so far as to blubber when Jocelyn takes her first poop on the potty, but I did gather up a bunch of their old onesis that can be used for a quilt (MOM—expect another project in your future!), each piece symbolizing a moment or two of their time as babies. When I place that quilt on my lap I can remember back to a time when I was cold.

I hope that next year I can be there for the people that need me. I hope that the compassion joke continues, but that beneath the laughter there’s a real sense that I want to listen and I want to help, if I can. And if I can’t help, I can at least offer wine.

Reverb10, Day 17. Prompt: Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?