Bits

My thoughts are in a million and one places right now, but listing sounds wonderful. So here is a nice general list - the things I'm loving right now. Please share something you are thoroughly enjoying right now, mundane or exotic, doesn't matter. How I love hearing from you!

Miscellaneous Things/People/Places I'm Loving (in no particular order):

1. Celestial Seasonings Tangerine Orange Herbal Tea

2. Aveda's Tangerine Oil (sensing a theme?)


3. The series "White Collar." So many things I could say, but probably should not. Anyhow, delightful.

4. The idea of travel - I crave the Orient Express, Istanbul, Prague, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Seville and ALL of Italy.

5. Tiny, little cherry tomatoes.

6. Letters in the mail - nothing better.

7. Commenting on soccer players' (or futbol, whichever you prefer) hair styles. This drives my husband slightly nanners.

8. The word "screed." Great word. I'm sure we've all endured a screed or two in our lifetimes.

9. Velvet couches. Lux galore.

10. C.O. Bigelow's lemon lip gloss. Yum.

11. The color Peacock Blue. Don't know if I have the courage to a paint a room in it, but maybe a chair.

12. Walking, walking, walking.

13. Polite people. A dinosaur nearing extinction.

14. And this picture:


Thank heavens for the little things that brighten our days!

The Art and Science of Female

I am a woman searching for her high heels, her cream blush, her bra, her favorite bag. A robber? Temporary amnesia? No, daughters. I am smooshed between a toddler and a twelve year old. The difference? Surprisingly, very little. I find my high heels on my toddler girl. She walks beautifully in them and with far more nonchalant hip sway then I could ever muster. My blush discretely disappears yet my twelve year old has the enviable color of youth and roses on her cheeks. My bra? Well, it's on my toddler's head as a hat - a true re-configuration.

They are each pushing - pushing to know what is female and to put it on like a coat, a pink coat at that. But it is so much more then the trappings of Sephora. But this is what I get a kick of - their quest for independence. This I relate to. My toddler will no longer wait for me to place her in her highchair. It is a tower she must climb. I stand just behind, my hands ready to catch her, and even this annoys her ego. My 12 year old girl wants to roam a mall with her friends and have her very own cell phone (ah, the bane of our relationship).

When my oldest girl was diagnosed in the hospital with Type I, diabetes, we all felt thrown into deep water. A wonderful nurse came in to teach my 8 year old girl how to take her shots (at least 5-7 shots a day). The nurse called us over and said, "Okay, mom and dad, I'm going to teach you how to give this girl her shots." Well, my daughter wasn't having it. She told the nurse, "No, you teach me. I'm going to give myself my own shots." The nurse looked at us. My husband and I looked at each other and then we took the plunge, "Yeah, okay. Teach her how to do it." And since then, that's how it has always been. Independence personified.

Toddlers, girls, women crave to prove, mostly to themselves. I can hack this. I will master this - the high heel, geometry, the art of flirting, rollerskating, taxes. I'm watching it before my very eyes - two girls determined to figure it out. It's fun to watch.

2010: Slaying the Dragon

So we have stumbled, nay tripped, into 2010. Lovely blank calender with so much possibility. Possibility is so alluring, sort of grabs your imagination and runs with it. Being a list fanatic, of course I have developed a list for 2010, but I will not bore you with the entire list. Over the years, and the course of much reading on the subject of goals, I have learned to try to keep goals specific and in the realm of realism. Hate that word - realism. How ugly. But that said, realism in part is so ugly because it means dealing with the hard, inescapable nuts and bolts of what is. My ugly dose of realism: I can't sleep. So the ugly, corresponding goal: To learn how to sleep like a normal person. Go to bed at a normal time, wake up. No fits of tossing and turning, no hot baths at 3 in the morning, no raiding the fridge at 4.

Kudos to me - I was sent to a sleep neurologist. Brainy woman and her side-kick told me that there is no medicine to cure this inability to sleep, especially one associated with chronic illness. Sigh. No quick fix? No. She told me that my brain had completely forgotten how to sleep, when to sleep, etc. Side note: I understand forgetting how to use your Cusinart - totally get that. Forgetting how to sleep? NOT a good sign of things to come.

So I went home with a stinking list - yes, I am giving the word "list" a negative connotation here. This is not pretty. I am to take no nap, beyond a 1/2 hour nap in the afternoon. Doesn't matter how yucky sick I am or brain dead. Too bad. I am not to go to bed before 1 o'clock (AM!) and I must be up by 6 0'clock - no matter what. No pity, if I am unable to sleep at all. Up, up you sad bag of bones. The idea is that by sheer torture, my body will submit and eventually return to a regular sleeping pattern. Key word: torture.

These are the hard knocks of an insomniac. But I am determined to kick this baby to the curb. This sleep thing has me by the throat and 2010 will be the year that this woman takes back the night. Yeehaw.

(dear friends, are you busy sharpening a sword? Preparing to slay any dragons? What is your quest?)